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FRANCIS JOSEPH 
AND HIS COURT 




Photograph, Paul Thompson, 



The Late Francis Joseph 



FRANCIS JOSEPH 

AND HIS COURT 



FROM THE MEMOIRS OF 

COUNT ROGER DE RESSEGUIER 

(Son of Francis Joseph's Court Chamberlain) 



BY 

HERBERT VIVIAN, M.A. 

KNIGHT OF THE ROYAL 8EBVIAN OBDEB OF TOKOVO 

OFTICEB OF THE BOTAL MONTENEQBIN OBDEB OF DANUiO 

AND ACTHOB OP 

"bEBVIA, THE POOB MAN's PABADISB," 

"the bebvian tbaqedt, etc." 



ILLUSTRATED 



NEW YORK 

JOHN LANE COMPANY 

MCMXVII 






^ 



COPTKIGHT, 1917, 

By John Lane Company 



:'^li 



Press of 

J. J. Little & Ives Company 

New York, U. S. A. 



CONTENTS 

CEAFTEB PAGE 

I Memories 11 

II From Miramar to Meyerling ... 28 

III The Truth of the Tragedy op Meyer- 
ling 43 

rV The Peculiarities and Virtues op the 

Empress Elisabeth 67 

V The Adventures of Louise of Coburg 90 

VI Archduke Francis Ferdinand and His 

Brother Otho 106 

VII Intermezzo: William I. and His Unsus- 
pected Love 126 

VIII The Three Austro-Belgian Princesses : 

Charlotte, Stephanie and Louise . 146 

IX Francis Joseph, Paterfamilias . . . 164 

X The Rapacious Hapsburgs .... 180 

XI Francis Joseph, Man of the World . 199 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

The Late Francis Joseph .... Frontispiece 

FACING 
PAGE 

Francis Joseph (1849) 30 

Princess Stephanie of Belgium .... 54 

Nicholas II., Ex-tsar of Russia .... 88 

Archduke Francis Ferdinand and His Wife, 

THE Countess Sophia Chotek .... 106 

Francis Joseph at the Wedding of Charles 
Francis Joseph, the New Emperor of Aus- 
tria 110 

Emperor Charles Francis Joseph and Em- 
press Zita of Austria 114 

Archduchess Maria- Josepha 118 

Archduke Francis Ferdinand and His Family 122 

William I., King of Prussia 142 

Francis Joseph and His Famous Thorough- 
bred Saddle Horses 174 

Francis Joseph in Hunting Costume . . 190 

7 



8 Illustrations 



rAcma 

PAGB 



Francis Joseph (1914) . 204 

Francis Joseph from a Painting by Julius 
RiTTER VON Blaas 220 

Francis Joseph in Tyrolean Costume . . . 224 

Three Generations op Hapsburgs 



FRANCIS JOSEPH 
AND HIS COURT 



FRANCIS JOSEPH AND 
HIS COURT 



CHAPTER I 
MEMORIES 

Let me muster my memories. 

How far away they seem! 

I see a castle, the Castle of Nisko. Nisko lords 
and noble ladies are all gathered together in a 
spacious room, talking in hushed tones of the scan- 
dalous loves of an Archduke. Mystery. Tragedy. 
Hush, how terrible! I am quite a child, but I lis- 
ten to the whispers, though I am more concerned 
with the fact that the endless plains outside are deep 
in snow. 

Then at Vienna, I am walking with my mother 

through avenues of limes, all very sweet after a 

shower. A tall, beautiful (well, rather beautiful) 

princess takes me on her knee. Her eyes are 

strange and sad. 

11 



12 Francis Joseph and His Court 

"Who is it, mamma?" 

"Stephanie, the wife of the Emperor's heir." 

Later on my mother tells me more. She tells 
stories about nobles, fit only for nobles' ears, stories 
that the vulgar must not know. I can still hear her 
voice. My mind is still full of those days, of our 
palace at Vienna, of the famous guests who came 
there, of the old Austrian and German castles, 
where we were entertained. 

More recent times. My family has been scat- 
tered, but I still meet old acquaintances in various 
parts of Europe, venerable ladies, retired officials, 
and they always have something to relate. Even 
the newspapers now chatter in undertones. But 
only those who know can reconstruct the whole 
drama, the whole comedy. There are certain sub- 
tle fibres linking facts across the years, and they 
can only be known to those who have passed their 
lives in this atmosphere. They link remoter his- 
tory with recent times. 

Maybe you know part of my narrative already, 
but you know it with too many gaps, with a savour 
of mystery; all too complicated or too simple. 

The connecting thread travels from mouth to 
mouth in the noble, ancient palaces of Austria and 



Memories 13 

Germany. It can never issue from that closed cir- 
cle. Do you remember the steel castle of the En- 
chanter Merlin on an inaccessible peak of the Pyre- 
nees ? Such is the German aristocracy round about 
the Emperor and his family, locking up in itself 
the stories which must be withheld from the vulgar. 
Up above it is the old Emperor planing on his two- 
headed eagle like Merlin on the hippogriff. 

But what if we try to find the end of this thread? 

Here it is : Francis Joseph. Many sad and comic 
events have already woven themselves into his al- 
most septuagenarian reign, and all of them issue 
from himself, depend on him, bear his imprint. He 
is the thread. 

Let me begin with Maximilian. 

A boyhood that dreamed impossible dreams ; the 
ambition of a throne that cost his life; the pity of 
all pious hearts; then the cold silence of a Vienna 
church: these are known about Maximilian. But 
the histories relate more: for instance, that it was 
the Emperor of the French who offered him the 
crown of Mexico and then left him in the hands of 
the rebels; that, less than two months after his 
death, the Emperors and Empresses of Austria and 



14 Francis Joseph and His Court 

France met at Salzburg in friendly conclave, ban- 
queting and feasting for five days in utter disregard 
of mourning. Beyond this the histories are silent. 

And facts tell a very different tale. The Mexi- 
can tragedy revealed a hero worthy of other days, 
and with him an inexperienced politician, — Maxi- 
milian, to wit, and Napoleon III., while it left in 
shadow the real authors of the betrayal, — of the foul 
deed which the public has not yet discovered, which 
has long been known in Austria only to the many 
who dare not tell. 

The unfortunate Maximilian was betrayed by his 
brother Francis Joseph and by Francis Joseph's 
partisans. 

I should not make such a statement if I were not 
possessed of proofs which fill all my youthful memo- 
ries. My mother. Countess Erminia of Strachwitz, 
was lady in waiting at that time. She received a 
personal invitation from Maximilian and Carlotta, 
then starting for Mexico, to take over the supreme 
charge of the Court of the new Empire as Ober- 
sihofmeisterin. Though she refused, she was asso- 
ciated with many of the events which I am now 
about to relate. My father. Count Hadrian de 
Resseguier, one of the Emperor's chamberlains. 



Memories 15 

owned the great estate and castle of Nisko between 
the Tatra mountains and the San; among his guests 
there were Father Fischer, archbishop of Mexico, 
and Prince Iturbide of the Incas, Maximilian's 
adopted son. But it was my uncle. Count Oliver de 
Resseguier, now first chamberlain of Galicia, who 
acted as Francis Joseph's chief instrument in this 
black business. At one time my family could talk 
of nothing else. 

There have been many misfortunes in the pri- 
vate life of the old Emperor. But the origin of them 
all is to be found in the grave fault of his youth: 
his hatred of his brother Maximilian. 

It may have been in 1846. The Archduqhess 
Sophia, mother of Maximilian and Francis Joseph, 
the future Emperor, was receiving in one of the 
great saloons of the Hofburg. The Empress Mary 
Caroline was there. My mother, then fifteen years 
of age, sat among the maids of honour by virtue of 
her rank as the daughter of a high functionary of 
the Empire. She often recalled the gold and the 
mirrors, the soft light stealing through the high 
curtained windows upon the lace kerchiefs of the 
young ladies, upon tall fair head-dresses and crino- 
lines. They chattered, they worked embroideries 



i6 Francis Joseph and His Court 

for charity (even in those distant days), and my 
mother was clever with her needle. Then, no one 
knew why, in the presence of their imperial aunt 
and their mother and all those gentle children who 
had gathered together for good works, the two 
young Archdukes, Francis Joseph and Maximil- 
ian, came to blows. They were sixteen and four- 
teen years old, fine, tall boys with fair hair. The 
younger, Maximilian, proved the stronger. Fran- 
cis Joseph's mouth and nose were bleeding when 
the pair were separated from their unbrotherly 
embrace. It was a humiliation to be remembered 
later on. 

This scene, as the high society of Vienna knows, 
led to many others, each more violent than the last. 
For Maximilian's mother took his part, he openly 
confessed liberal ideas, he acquired a certain popu- 
larity in Italy and Hungary: in fact, he was be- 
coming a danger. Meanwhile, on the 2nd of De- 
cember, 1848, the other had become Emperor. 

Maximilian had a chivalrous and adventurous 
soul. It was with difficulty that he reconciled him- 
self to the white Austrian uniform. He ought to 
have worn a crusader's coat of mail, or with plumed . 



Memories 17 

hat and laced coat scanned the seas for unknown 
lands on board a galley. Through the walls of the 
Hofburg he dreamed of the smell of strange wares 
borne by ships from the Orient towards Fiume. He 
yearned for distant lands with deserts and fragrant 
plants gilded by a great big sun. Therefore he 
loved the books of Gustave Aimard and the "Ro- 
mancero." He delighted in exotic collections. My 
mother had some very precious albums which he 
brought back from Japan. There were many 
strange tilings to be admired at the Castle of Mira- 
mar. 

Advantage was taken of his love of distant lands 
to remove him far afield so that he might be for- 
gotten by the people. Every encouragement was 
given to his inclinations. At the age of nineteen he 
made his first great sea-voyage on the frigate 
Novara. When, in the cathedral of Granada, he 
saw the emblems of Ferdinand the Catholic's coro- 
nation, a hoop of gold and a sword, he said with 
pride and melancholy, "It would be a fine dream 
for the Hapsburg to gird the one in order to gain 
the other." 

But he returned. He succeeded Radetzki as 



i8 Francis Joseph and His Court 

Viceroy of Lombardy. He was set over the Hun- 
garians as Governor General. 

However, he displayed too much indulgence to- 
wards the Italians, he was too much liked by the 
Hungarians ... so at least his opponents mur- 
mured at Vienna. And, it seems to me, at the back 
of the honours conferred on him, there lurked al- 
ready the accusation that, making common cause 
with Italians and Hungarians, he was meditating 
high treason against his brother the Emperor. 

It was not only his brother who distrusted him. 
At Vienna the princely families of Windischgraetz, 
Schwarzenberg, Liechtenstein, Lobkowitz, Auer- 
sperg, all the conservatism of the old rulers who 
had been despoiled by Napoleon, formed a sort of 
entrenched camp against Archduke Maximilian. 

So he, who had made a love match with the beauti- 
ful Princess Charlotte of Belgium, withdrew him- 
self far from all the hatred in the Castle of Mira- 
mar, a white Norman dream among the red rocks 
of the Adriatic. 

But he did not remain there long. While Char- 
lotte rambled in the gardens that bear no roses, 
while he read romances in the aquarium, the Mexi- 
can intrigue was being prepared, the intrigue which 



Memories 19 

was to bring death to him and madness to his wife. 

Although the histories say it was Napoleon III. 
who offered Maximilian the crown of Mexico, where 
he had long kept his troops to fight Juarez and the 
republican movement, very many people at Vienna 
knew what share Francis Joseph had had in the se- 
lection. And they knew his reasons too. 

Perhaps the Archduke suspected them, for he 
hesitated a long time before accepting. First he 
wanted to be summoned to Mexico by a plebiscite, 
also that France should guarantee the support of 
her troops by treaty. Then he refused to renounce 
his rights to the succession to the Austrian throne, 
which the Emperor sought to impose. 

At last he accepted. Perhaps he hoped to prove 
stronger than his enemies. It was April 1864. 

But at Vienna, in the aristocratic and diplomatic 
world, the scandal was enormous, although every 
effort was made to keep the affair secret. The 
significance of Maximilian's departure for Mexico 
was clear. The idea was to get rid of him. His 
friends spoke of it with grief, his enemies with ill- 
concealed indifference; foreign diplomatists who 
had learned what was going on sought to take ad- 



20 Francis Joseph and His Court 

vantage of the event. And no one made any mys- 
tery about it. I have already related how my 
mother refused a high position at the new Court. It 
was offered to Countess d'Harmoncourt, who also 
declined. Being asked her reasons at Prince 
Schwarzenberg's party, she said, "It is true I have 
written comedies. But for that very reason I have 
no desire to take part in a tragedy." 

My uncle. Count Oliver de Resseguier, returning 
from a colloquy with Francis Joseph, from whom 
he had asked leave to retain his commission in the 
Austrian navy while he went as Chamberlain to 
Mexico, met a friend who also wanted to go out 
with the new Emperor. "I have no family and 
have made my will," my uncle said to him, "but I 
should not advise any one who has anything to lose 
to go where I am going," And he knew what he 
was talking about, for, as we shall see, he was an 
instrument of the Court of Vienna in that dark 
tragedy. 

Thus there was much talk at that time about the 
departure. And those who knew most must have 
recognised it as a sure preliminary to those Austro- 
French arrangements which culminated later on in 
the first meeting of the two Emperors at Salzburg. 



Memories 21 

With reference to that meeting, Countess d'Har- 
moncourt has related a serious incident. 

"Your Majesty," Francis Joseph said in French, 
knowing that Napoleon would not have answered a 
remark in German, though he understood that lan- 
guage, "Your Majesty, I need all your troops in 
Europe." 

To which Napoleon replied coldly, "To the detri- 
ment of Your Majesty's brother." 

For Maximilian's last support in that unfortu- 
nate year 1867 lay in the French troops commanded 
by the treacherous Marshal Bazaine. The pretext, 
then, for withdrawing the troops was political neces- 
sity. The real motive was the Emperor's implacable 
hatred of his brother. 

It would be futile to speak of the brief Empire of 
Mexico. It has already been spoken of enough. 

As everybody knows, Maximilian encountered 
huge difficulties at once. The clerical party was 
against him because he began his reign with liberal 
reforms ; the Liberals were against him because he 
outlawed ex-President Juarez's soldiers; Bazaine 
and his Frenchmen were disloyal and weary of the 
whole business, which was also unpopular in France, 
where the wits called Vera Cruz, "The French- 



22 Francis Joseph and His Court 

men's nursery-garden." And there were threats 
from the United States, which disHked an Imperial 
government as a neighbour. Against all these 
troublesome torrents there was only a mockery of 
Empire, a Court in a capital, where, after State 
banquets, two servants were posted at the doors to 
collect gold forks and silver spoons which high 
Mexican dignitaries had pocketed as souvenirs. 

And what of the Austrian dignitaries? Few 
came with him; many had already returned home. 
Among those who remained was Count Oliver de 
Resseguier, who was chamberlain and confidant of 
the Emperor of Mexico and at the same time a 
secret agent for carrying out the dark designs of 
the Court of Vienna. 

The correspondence which passed at that time 
between the Court and the Austrian capital was 
voluminous. And if Charlotte, in her supreme an- 
xiety for her husband now that he was abandoned 
on the outbreak of revolution, left Mexico to im- 
plore help in Europe, it was by the advice of Count 
de Kesseguier inspired from Vienna. At least they 
wanted to save her. 

It is this intrigue of Francis Joseph and his 
partisans through secret agents which has been hid- 



Memories 23 

den from the general public and which I want to 
emphasize. 

And so Maximilian, forced by the triumph of the 
repubhcan troops, left Mexico City for Orizaba. 
When he was advised to seek refuge in Europe, he 
replied, "A true Hapsburg does not leave his post 
in the hour of danger." Unfortunate hero, worthy 
of better times and better men! 

The time came to retreat also from Orizaba and 
seek shelter in the fortress of Queretaro. He bade 
a sad farewell to his Hungarian guards, whom he 
left in order to be but a Mexican among Mexicans. 
He set out one morning galloping between Gen- 
erals Lopez and Marquez, both of whom after- 
wards betrayed him. He galloped under the old 
gigantic trees of the Hacienda de los Ahuletes, 
pondering perhaps over the times when those very 
trees were pillars of the virgin cathedrals of the 
Indians, forests where Montezuma celebrated mys- 
terious sacrifices. He l^eheld the tree which the peo- 
ple named "the tree of night and grief" because 
Ferdinand Cortez wept there when he was about 
to be driven out of Mexico. And amid this old 
poetry he forgot the tragic prose that was choking 
him; perhaps he derived omens of good hope. 



24 Francis Joseph and His Court 

But the sad days of the siege of Queretaro fol- 
lowed. Then, when the situation was already despe- 
rate, Maximilian entrusted a huge sum of money 
in gold and banknotes, perhaps a million, to Count 
de Resseguier, so that he might go to New York 
and start a press campaign to influence Juarez 
through the American public. He was to confer 
about this with Mr. Havemeyer, the Austrian Con- 
sul General at New York, now an American citizen 
and many times a millionaire. 

But events turned out very differently. De 
Resseguier, who possessed the technical knowledge 
of a naval officer, sought out Juarez and gave him 
the plans of the fortress of Queretaro, which he had 
received from Vienna. He then repaired to New 
York and had long colloquies with Havemeyer and 
Count Griinne, Francis Joseph's aide-de-camp, 
with the result that the American press was filled 
with ferocious articles against Maximilian, who was 
meanwhile betrayed into his enemy's hands. 

Before the fall of the fortress of Queretaro in 
distant Mexico, a strange event occurred to dis- 
turb the industrious peace of Nisko, the broad es- 
tate then belonging to my father in Western 
Galicia. 



Memories 25 

Count Oliver de Resseguier arrived there one 
morning accompanied by Father Fischer and young 
Prince Iturbide, of the family of the Incas, Maxi- 
milian's adopted son. The Count handed over to 
my mother with much mystery, a number of pre- 
cious objects, begging her to take care of them. 
There were huge gold spurs weighing over fifteen 
pounds, a staff richly ornamented with the crown 
and monogram of the Emperor of Mexico, and 
three big purses of Mexican leather stuffed full of 
doubloons and banknotes. 

Presently, a still stranger thing occurred. A 
messenger, who must have ridden the fifty miles 
from Raeszow to Nisko without drawing rein, 
rushed towards the castle clamouring for my uncle. 
The Count came to meet this man in a great hurry 
and received a letter. When he had read it, he ex- 
claimed, "Thanks be to God, the million is now 
irrevocably my property!" And, having recovered 
the money and jewels from my mother, he departed 
at once for Vienna with the Bishop of Mexico and 
the young Indian Prince. 

The other incident occurred at Vienna in the 
Court chapel, the Sistine, so to speak, of the castle 
of the Hapsburgs : a somewhat moving scene which 



26 Francis Joseph and His Court 

disturbed the stately calm of the place for the first 
time in its long history. It happened at the side 
of the high altar in an oratory then used almost ex- 
clusively by the Archduchess Sophia, mother of 
Maximilian and the Emperor. At the end of the 
oratory was a walled window with bits of wood 
forming a sort of cross in the wall. 

The Archduchess came in and knelt down de- 
voutly; behind her were some thirty persons of the 
Court aristocracy, among whom was my mother; 
the last to enter was the Emperor, who remained 
at the back of the oratory. There was a deep si- 
lence. Perhaps the courtiers were praying, as eti- 
quette requires them to do. Then all of a sudden 
the Archduchess' eyes opened very wide and stared 
at the cross in the wall. She became terribly pale 
and distressed ; she raised her arms to Heaven and, 
before all her Court, cried in stentorian tones, "Oh! 
my poor Maximilian, my poor murdered son!" 

Then she fell heavily between the two arms of 
the chair, before the Emporer Francis Joseph could 
save his mother from wounding her head against 
the back of the chair. She was carried out in a 

faint. 

That very morning, the 18th of June 1867, her 



Memories 27 

son Maximilian was shot in the fortress of Quere- 
taro. 

Lovely and Christian was the death of the flower 
of the Hapsburgs and many wept for him in 
Europe. Nor is he yet forgotten. 

But it was sought to impose silence about many 
things at Vienna. Father Fischer disappeared in 
some monastery or other ; Prince Iturbide was mor- 
ally buried in a Styrian castle; Count Olive de 
Resseguier was very speedily made Chamberlain to 
H. M. the Emperor and Knight of the Order of 
Malta, with other high distinctions. 

Maximilian, brought home in the Novara^ the 
same ship in which he had set forth, was buried in 
the Church of the Capucins between the tombs of 
Maria Theresa and Marie Louise, the wife of 
Napoleon I. 

But there yet remained another victim of the in- 
trigue to confront those who had conceived it, — 
Charlotte, the unfortunate Princess, who, after 
vainly soliciting help from the Courts of Europe, 
became insane when she received the news of her 
husband's death. 



CHAPTER II 
FROM MIRAMAR TO MEYERLING 

AxL now recognise the tragic life of the Emperor, 
all the more tragic because it lasted so long. How 
strange it seems to recall the fair and nimble lover 
who muffled his footsteps at dead of night to creep 
into an alcove. Strange and painful. I cannot 
bear to think of (Edipus in the garb of Paris. If 
his face was sad and solemn, let me pretend that it 
had been always so. 

But there was in the early years of Francis Jo- 
seph one fact among others which is very intimately 
related to the mysterious death of Archduke Ru- 
dolph. Without this fact nothing can be explained, 
and I am going to explain the death of Rudolph. 

Let us travel then from Miramar to Meyerling. 
But the way lies through Vienna and we must pause 
a while at the Hofburg. 

The Hofburg is the imperial castle, an enormous 
magniloquent edifice, proud of many epochs and 
in many styles, the Olympus of the Hapsburgs. 

28 



From Miramar to Meyerling 29 

What other dweUings can boast of a similar suc- 
cession of occupants ? Nor is there any clash of all 
those epochs and all those styles. A great hall full 
of thrones and baldaquins still proclaims loudly 
the Spanish magnificence of Charles V., while a 
graceful little boudoir with mirrors and twisted cor- 
nices reflects the gilded, somewhat tawdry graces of 
Marie Antoinette of Austria and her most unhappy 
spouse. There are stones that tell you nothing un- 
til you compel them to speak ; but the imperial cas- 
tle of Vienna has a soul of its own for every one of 
its thousand halls. As a boy I used to admire in 
one of the courts a monument of Francis II. be- 
cause even after his death he still remained sur- 
rounded by his four wives, Elisabeth, Maria The- 
resa, Marie Louise and Augusta Caroline ; and they 
had been turned into symbols, compelled that is to 
represent in marble the virtues of Strength, Wis- 
dom, Labour and Justice. I observed, however, as 
the people of Vienna had observed before me, that 
one of the wives was smaller than the others, and 
that wife represented Justice. . . . Oh! naughty 
people of Vienna. Still I do not think the faces of 
all these illustrious ancestors can be very happy to- 
day when, from their frames and pedestals, they see 



30 Francis Joseph and His Court 

their last descendant pass through the halls weighed 
down with years and thoughts. A great-grandson 
at eighty-five? Rather old, I know. But it is not 
of this one that I wanted to speak. Let us rather 
hark back to the youth of twenty and thirty. 

For that I must refer to my mother's memories. 

My mother was hardly ever absent from any of 
the imperial entertainments. With Countess Anna 
Erdody and Countess WimpfFen she was one of the 
three handsomest and most popular ladies at the 
Court of Vienna. As we have seen, she frequented 
it at a very early age, embroidering clothes for char- 
ity in the circle of the widowed Empress Maria 
Caroline Pia. At that time, though she was not yet 
sixteen, she had been officially affianced to Prince 
Schwarzenberg who had defeated Napoleon at 
Leipzig and was about eighty years of age. But 
Cupid was not as kind to the old general as Mars 
had been, for before the wedding could take place 
the god slew him with a shaft that was not a shaft 
of love. And my mother did not weep for him. I 
fancy he was mourned only by the fountains which 
played beneath the lime-trees of his really regal 
castle. 

Three years later, in 1849, she was presented at 



Photograph, Paul Thompson. 




Francis Joseph (1849) 



From Miramar to Meyerling 31 

the Court of the new Emperor, Francis Joseph, who 
had but recently ascended the throne. 

It was a very high festival. He wore the high- 
est uniform, which clung to his nimble body as a 
glittering sheath clings to a sword. My mother 
has told me how deeply she was impressed by the 
great beauty of this Slavonic Adonis. She had 
already seen him many times but only as a simple 
Archduke ; now she admired him as a being far re- 
moved from mortal ken. 

But the deity condescended very soon; descended 
and drew nigh. 

. This indeed, the courtiers whispered, was the de- 
fect of the young sovereign: when he was dancing, 
he came far too close to his partners, he drew much 
too nigh. 

And she had herself occasion to realise him as a 
very enterprising gentleman. She had sometimes 
to do as her young friends did when they were com- 
manded to take part in a Ball-hei-Hof. Com- 
manded? Yes, because Austrian sovereigns do not 
ask: they command. But these ungrateful girls 
used to plead illness so as not to dance with the 
Emperor. 

Now, while I think of it, let me distinguish be- 



32 Francis Joseph and His Court 

tween the various festivities which took place at 
the Hofburg. Etiquette was strict at the Court of 
Vienna. The ghost of Charles VI,, father of Maria 
Theresa, last of the true Hapsburgs, still breathes 
through the halls, an attenuated ghost perhaps, but 
not much faded and certainly not vulgarised. And 
with this ghost the strictest rules of Spain will sur- 
vive. 

There are two entertainments at Court : the Hof- 
hall and the Ball-bei-Hof. The former is a meagre 
concession to the hated spirit of the age since the 
French Revolution opened the most exclusive 
courts to enriched grocers. It is the great official 
ball which brings together the descendants of sov- 
ereign mediaeval families and the government of- 
ficial whose wife has come to feast her eyes on the 
"great folk" whom she may never see again. The 
Ball-bei-Hof is rather a private party for those 
whose birth entitles them to be received on intimate 
terms: and they are not many in Austria. 

The Emperor's demeanour differed entirely at 
the two entertainments. He was rather reserved 
at a Hofhall, much less reserved at a dance among 
friends. 

Indeed, at the official functions he appeared as 



From Miramar to Meyerling 33 

cold and aloof as an automaton all buried in gold 
lace and decorations. All the dances were under 
pragmatic sanction, all the ladies under pragmatic 
sanction, every movement under pragmatic sanc- 
tion. He could concede waltzes and mazurkas only 
to Archduchesses; for mere Countesses there were 
quadrilles. 

But family functions were quite another pair of 
pumps. Beneath the very high uniform you could 
discern the youth of little more than twenty years, 
a very valiant youth no doubt, but at the same time 
impetuous and sensual. In fact, he admired fresh 
handsome women. Why not? He was young and 
handsome. Besides, he was the Emperor. 

But the noble damsels resorted to all sorts of de- 
vices to escape him. 

Here is an example. At that time there was a 
very fashionable dance. First the men, that is the 
Emperor and the noblest lords, took their places 
in the chief hall with their partners, all the pret- 
tiest Contesseln or little countesses as they were 
called with an affectionate diminutive. The old 
dignitaries, the honest pot-bellied fathers of fam- 
ilies, the mothers who hid their elderly bodies in 
vast crinolines were all banished to adjacent rooms. 



34 Francis Joseph and His Court 

Only the young people were admitted to the chief 
hall. 

Now the men grouped themselves on one side, the 
ladies on the other. There was a big empty space 
in the middle so that the servants could draw a 
curtain that hung on a rope from one wall to the 
other at a little more than a man's height above the 
floor. It was of rich red velvet, with long gilded 
fringes that shivered and glittered in the splendour 
of the illuminations. These fringes, unlike most 
things in this world, were there for an object. All 
the girls were drawn up in a row behind the cur- 
tain and each had to show a little foot under the 
fringes, and one hand — I forget whether it was the 
right or the left — ^had to be stretched out above the 
rope. 

It was a fancy fair of feet and hands, where the 
men had to choose partners from these graceful in- 
dications. When all the choices had been made, the 
curtain fell, each claimed his partner and the dance 
began. 

Unless a foreign sovereign was among the guests, 
the Emperor had the privilege of the first choice, 
and he was very keen about it, for he had to stand 
in the middle of the hall with his partner, while the 



From Miramar to Meyerling 35 

other couples gathered round him slowly one by 
one. And in order that his choice might not be left 
entirely to blind chance, he used, if rumour may be 
believed, to have recourse to all sorts of strange 
strategems in collusion with the venal shoemakers 
of Vienna. The shape or colour of the shoes, some 
cunning innovation, an eccentric buckle served to 
betray the little countesses. But they were quick 
enough to tumble to the game, and, much craftier 
than he, would exchange their little shoes behind 
a door or screen, under the very nose of some fat 
excellency. They were as merry as grigs when 
their innocent fraud came off. After all, the Em- 
peror's fun was innocent enough, though it led 
sometimes to disagreeable incidents. 

For instance, one evening when the aide-de-camp 
came up to my young mother to command her to 
dance with the Emperor, her father, the Count of 
Strachwitz, an old and very great noble, replied 
with great firmness and dignity, "I forbid it." And 
his courage was secretly admired. 

But the frivolous dances at the Ball-bei-Hof 
w«re obviously insufficient for a sturdy young man 
even though he happened to be Emperor of Austria 
and King of Hungary. 



36 Francis Joseph and His Court 

Did Francis Joseph, then, have love affairs? 
Perhaps, but that is not our concern, least of all at 
this terribly grave hour. Still, we must always re- 
member that great men, dominators of the world, 
are human beings like the rest of us; though they 
live in the public eye, they have hearts and senses. 
And we are justified in considering their senses 
when they affect the heart or public life, when they 
give rise to events which form part of history. 

Now, among the love affairs of Francis Joseph, 
there is certainly one that was certainly connected 
with the death of the Crown Prince Rudolph. This 
then belongs to the domain of history and I pro- 
pose to relate the facts. 

Francis Joseph was married, but his wise court- 
iers thought that he required a mistress ; they were 
quite observant men, you see. 

Poor wretched Emperors! Not being allowed 
to choose their own loves must interfere sadly with 
the course of true affection. Not theirs the peas- 
ant's wench in the golden sunshine of the fields or 
the unknown beauty in the whirlpool of high festi- 
val or dreamy poetic murmurs in the moonlight. 
A lady does not go out and do her own marketing 
when she has a cook to send ; and so for the Imper- 



From Miramar to Meyerling 37 

ial amours there are special functionaries in every 
well-ordered Court. 

At one time His Majesty had suffered a good 
deal from epilepsy, perhaps brought on by the shock 
of an attempt on his life in the Ringstrasse, but his 
health had considerably improved. Now there were 
certain Greek bankers or speculators trying to 
do business with Austria with the object of inflat- 
ing the value of their anaemic shares. So it came 

to pass that the incomparable Baron S had the 

happy idea of importing to Vienna the two Greek 
Princesses, or self-styled Princesses Baldacci, Bald- 
acci or Baldazzi, I don't remember very well. I 
don't even remember their Christian names, so we 
will call them Helen and Sophia. What I do re- 
member is that they were rather pretty. The one 
was tall and fair with very regular features and 
eyes full of passion ; the other was a different kind 
of jewel, almost a black pearl. They were differ- 
ent, yet strangly alike. My mother, who knew 
them at that time, told me she had never seen any 
one so pleasing. 

So the two exotic Princesses came to Vienna. 
They were received at the Palace, had board and 



38 Francis Joseph and His Court 

lodging there, were in fact appointed Hofdamen., 
ladies-in-waiting at Court. 

How did this happen? The only answer to the 
mystery was "by order of the Emperor." 

The opposition and contempt of the real ladies- 
in-waiting of the Imperial Court were prodigious. 
The amorous strategy of His Majesty remained a 
profound secret. The chatter of evil tongues was 
unceasing throughout Court circles. I believe that 
even the sparrows gossiped in their royal nests on 
the roofs of the Hofburg. 

Now I come to a point where there is no docu- 
mentary evidence. We must rely upon psychologi- 
cal reconstruction. All I have to go upon is what 
I heard from my mother and Countess Anastasia 
Wimpifen, who were for a long time associated 
with the choice made by the discreet agents of his 
Vecsera. It was she who told them all they knew. 

The Emperor seems to have been fairly pleased 
with the choice made by the discreet agents of his 
alcove. He dreamed pink dreams as he contem- 
plated the charms of the two new Court ladies. And 
they, devoted though they were to one another, 
seemed happy too. For it must be understood 
quite clearly that neither had the faintest suspicion 



From Miramar to Meyerling 39 

of her sister's true position in the household. Each 
thought she was the Emperor's exclusive favourite. 
There was far from being the least little germ of 
jealousy. Indeed each believed that, by sacrificing 
herself, she had created a high and more respectable 
position at Court for her beloved sister. The dis- 
creet agents of Francis Joseph had devoted all their 
craft and subtlety and knowledge of the world to 
keep up this illusion. 

The distance of their apartments, the hours of the 
Imperial visits, the choice of the servants: all was 
contrived so that the Emperor might hope to go on 
dreaming his rosy dreams for a very long time. 

Meanwhile, the financial interests of Greece pros- 
pered exceedingly. 

But a serious mistake had been made in esti- 
mating the minds of the two Imperial favourites. 
They were neither cold-hearted intriguers nor mere 
instruments of pleasure. On the contrary, they had 
two chaste natures ; two different characters, which 
were presently to reveal themselves. 

The revelation happened tragically and suddenly : 
a thunderbolt that all the lightning-conductors of 
the Hofburg roofs could not avert. An evening 
Q^me when one of the two sisters strolled into the 



40 Francis Joseph and His Court 

other's apartment without warning and discovered 
the great mystery. What happened then? There 
is no means of ascertaining. But next day the 
Vienna newspapers, meagre enough at that period, 
announced that one of the well-known Princesses 
Baldacci had thrown herself into the Danube near 
the Kaisermiihlen for reasons unknown. Only this 
and nothing more. 

But various details leaked out. The corpse had 
been pulled out at once. It had been caught in the 
wheel of one of the mills which are worked by the 
stream, somewhere near the bank. The poor girl, 
who was a strong swimmer, had tied a heavy stone 
inside her clothes to make death more certain. 
There was a terribly deep wound on her beautiful 
forehead, evidently caused by the wheel, which had 
been stopped by her body. 

As to the reasons for this sad suicide, the spar- 
rows had much food for whispers on the roofs of 
the Imperial castle. And their whispers were cer- 
tainly not complimentary to the Emperor. 

The other sister's moral awakening was awful. 
She departed, vowing never to return to the gilded 
splendour of the Hofburg. 



From Miramar to Meyerling 41 

"A husband must be found for her," somebody- 
said. So they looked out for a ruined aristocrat. 

But the Imperial agents, after having felt their 
way cautiously again and again, were forced to 
recognise the difficulty. The scandal had made far 
too much noise. It was like a stream that murmurs 
very low but trickles in everywhere — even below 
stairs. What man of birth and honour would con- 
sent to ally himself with the Imperial "cast-oflF"? 

At that time there was a great slump in the stock 
of the Greek bankers. 

Once more it was the indefatigable Baron S 

who made the magic discovery. 

What was the offer? A dowry of three million 
crowns, incredible wardrobes, a magnificent palace 
furnished by Imperial favour. Very well. At that 
price, something could certainly be found in Greece. 
Something was found in the shape of a self-styled 
Baron Vecsera, of doubtful title and assets nil, who 
had turned up at Vienna none knew how or whence. 

But the surviving Princess Baldacci was given to 
him at once, and his barony was confirmed by the 
Emperor. 

A child was born: Marie Vecsera. 

This closed the dramatic prelude to a yet more 



42 Francis Joseph and His Court 

horrible drama, which, many years later, was to 
wreak its fury on the only son and heir of the Em- 
peror. 

For it was she, little Marie Vecsera, who was to 
share a strange death with Rudolph, in the stupor 
of an orgy, among shrubberies of pines, in the soli- 
tary Castle of Meyerling. 



CHAPTER III 

THE TRUTH OF THE TRAGEDY OF 
MEYERLING 

Maximilian's fate was unavoidable. He had 
bared his breast, oiFered himself as a willing victim ; 
his thoughts had always been transparent. His 
memory was a sad one, but it was perfumed with 
tropical plants, bathed in the clear sun of a June 
morning. A serene passing under a serene sky. 

Whenever I think of the death of Maximilian, I 
see Miramar. That castle which he built for him- 
self also bares its breast bravely to the storms; 
through a hundred Gothic windows it reveals its 
whole soul and cries, "Here there are no mysteries;" 
it drinks in air and light; intolerant of shadows, it 
has surrounded itself with a sunny solitude. We 
all know how Maximilian lived and how he died. 

Meyerling is the prisoner of a valley. Limes and 
pines are its crowded sentinels, now green, now 
grey, yet always merry. The birds tell it that be- 
yond those costmary woods there is a beautiful blue 

43 



44 Francis Joseph and His Court 

sea, and on the other side an endless plain with 
streams that never hurry, and free Hungarian po- 
nies, and little farms intoxicating themselves with 
space and revelling in the sun from early dawn to 
dewy eve. Meyerling dreams of these things. You 
may espy the dreams on the panes of the windows 
when they are closed. But the dreams never come 
to life in this Imperial shooting-box, and it broods 
sometimes over strange things, it hugs itself in the 
gloom of its rooms, it assumes a grey, wicked, rebel- 
lious asj)ect. 

Perhaps that was why Rudolph loved it. 

Hudolph could only have died as he did, for each 
of us has his own appropriate death; it is only life 
that is unfair. "Heir apparent, profound student, 
master of physical exercises, full of virtues: the 
young Prince has prepared himself wisely for the 
future crown. Now he ascends the throne. His 
path is brighter still: wise laws, many wars, some 
injustice, but the Emperor X. the Third was at 
heart an excellent sovereign. We all know what 
he did; all the histories speak of him in the same 
tone, so there is no more to be said about him." But 
that sort of verdict means death indeed. Perhaps 
Archduke Rudolph did not desire anything of the 



Truth of the Tragedy of Meyerling 45 

kind. All through his life he was intelligent, and 
his intelligence found for him the mysterious trag- 
edy of Meyerling. 

At dawn on the 30th of January, 1899, a horrid 
grey mist settled down upon the lonely shooting- 
box as it does when the clouds crawl up the valley. 
A suicide, a crime, a classic bacchanalian orgy, a 
chaste night of love, a shameless Thais, the disil- 
lusion of a romantic girl, silent cabs, shots and fisti- 
cuffs: many strange melodramas were enacted be- 
hind the curtain of that horrid grey mist. The pub- 
lic could have torn that curtain aside, but it would 
not; it preferred to grope in the realms of fancy, 
for which Meyerling is famous. 

On the morning of the 30th of January, 1889, the 
news came to Vienna and soon spread everywhere 
that Archduke Rudolph, the only male child of the 
Emperor Francis Joseph, the heir to the Austro- 
Hungarian throne, "Kronprinz Rude," had been 
found dead in his Castle at Meyerling. 

He was in his thirty-first year, having been born 
on the 21st of August, 1858. On the 10th of July, 
1881, he had married Princes Stephanie of Bel- 
gium, from whom he had one child Elisabeth, then 
five and a half years old. 



46 Francis Joseph and His Court 

The news provoked indescribable scenes of grief 
at Court. The broken-hearted father desired that 
the funeral should take place in the strictest privacy. 

The body was transferred the same day to the 
capital and remained until Saturday in one of the 
halls of the Imperial Castle, which had been trans- 
formed into a mortuary chapel. Among the in- 
numerable wreaths were those of the widow, Arch- 
duchess Stephanie, of white roses, carnations and 
lilies of the valley, and that of the daughter, Prin- 
cess Elisabeth, of musk-roses. The dead Archduke 
lay in state on Sunday in the private chapel of the 
Castle and the people filed through in reverent, sor- 
rowing pilgrimage. The burial took place on Tues- 
day in the cemetery of the Capucins. On the tomb, 
beside that of Joseph II., eight hundred and thirty- 
five wreaths were laid. 

Condolences came from every part of the world. 
The Italians mourned the loss of their great ad- 
mirer. It was only a Trieste committee that found 
a word of cruel justice: "Francis Joseph is now 
experiencing the grief which the mother of Oberdan 
endured." 

Thus far, the version of history. 



Truth of the Tragedy of Meyerling 47 

An apoplectic stroke. That was the first official 
announcement. 

Aneurisms at thirty! In a youth who was pas- 
sionately devoted to riding and shooting and climb- 
ing! 

Forty-eight hours later the Government admitted 
suicide. 

The Emperor had said, "Let the public know the 
whole truth." 

The whole truth? The public had become sus- 
picious. It believed nothing and it believed every- 
thing. It set to work with scissors and paste upon 
all the news, both true and false, which leaked out 
little by little. 

There were naturally many comments upon the 
deep wound on Rudolph's head. 

At the lying in state, the body had been placed on 
a very high bier, but one could see something all the 
same. A deep wound like a great hole under the 
bandages. And the uncovered part of the temples 
had been filled up with wax. Men said, "What a 
hideous butchery!" A revolver shot. No, a gun- 
shot. Nonsense, fire-arms don't tear you to pieces 
like that. It must have been a club or a big stone. 
One could swear to that. 



48 Francis Joseph and His Court 

Then came the story of the Meyerling game- 
keeper, driven to avenge his honour as a husband. 
This was corroborated by the suicide of the game- 
keeper Werner the day after the Prince's death. 
But he had been on duty that night. It was much 
more hkely that he was overcome by dread of re- 
sponsibiHty rather than by remorse. 

Then all Rudolph's love-aif airs were dragged out 
into the light of day. Chief among them was his 
devotion to the young and beautiful Princess Ag- 
laia of Auersperg, the great friend of his sister the 
Archduchess Marie Valerie. The Princess had 
dearly loved the chivalrous Hudolph. There was 
talk of seduction. Prince Charles of Auersperg 
had avenged the betrayal of his sister. No it was 
her betrothed, the Prince of Schwarzenberg. 
There had been an American duel. Rudolph had 
drawn the black ball and had killed himself three 
days after. A black ball had been thrown through 
the window from the garden by a mysterious 
stranger while the Archduke was reading in his 
room. Every sort of wild tale went the rounds. 
An official contradiction was sent out through the 
Correspondenz Bureau: "Certain foreign news- 
papers have associated the names of the most illus- 



Truth of the Tragedy of Meyerling 49 

trious families of the Austrian nobility, such as the 
Auerspergs and the Schwarzenbergs, with the ca- 
tastrophe of Meyerling. We are authorised to de- 
clare that these assertions are pure inventions with- 
out any foundation in fact." 

Meanwhile, another circumstance had come to 
change the channels of the chatter. It was kept 
secret for two or three days, then it leaked out. 

Baroness Marie Vecsera, one of the best known 
girls in Vienna society, though not of the higher 
aristocracy, had died in the same Castle of Meyer- 
ling on the same night of the 30th of January. 

How did it happen? Count Hoyos and Duke 
Philip of Coburg could have told, for they were in 
the shooting-box with the Archduke and Marie 
Vecsera. But they told nothing, and the public had 
to return to the embroideries of their imagination. 

Some one said that the Archduke had been shot 
in the Park and that Marie Vecsera poisoned her- 
self when his body was brought in. This was the 
more credible because she was known to have a ro- 
mantic temperament. Budolph's coachman said he 
had driven them there in the afternoon; and when 
he strolled about the grounds at a late hour he per- 
ceived them dallying at a window, singing some of 



50 Francis Joseph and His Court 

the songs of the hour. But she died of wounds, 
some one else reported. Then there must have been 
a double suicide: they had made up their minds to 
die in each other's arms. The wound was in her 
spine, said one who knew. In that case, she must 
have leaped out of bed and tried to escape, where- 
upon Hudolph stabbed her in the back. All agreed 
that both bodies had been found stark naked. 

There were crumbs of truth in all this, food for 
many romances, a whole literature, during many 
years. But the truth remained hidden in the very 
narrow circle of those who knew. 

Denials in high places, romances below. Mean- 
while the police pursued their labours. Then one 
fine day, when they seemed hot on the chase, they 
were suddenly checked. You can guess what had 
happened : they had hunted too far up, reached too 
lofty an eminence. 

Still there were certain people who knew the 
truth all the same. There were those who had had 
a direct or indirect share in the preparation and 
development of the tragedy. Among them I may 
mention my mother's friends, Countess Anastasia 
WimpfFen and Countess Chorinsky-Mittrowsky. 
I shall have something to say further on about the 



Truth of the Tragedy of Meyerling 51 

responsibility of Countess Wimpffen, who after- 
wards killed herself with a terrible poison. Count- 
ess Chorinsky, now wife of Prince Auersperg, first 
married the Lord Chief Justice, who was naturally 
concerned in the affair to a considerable extent. 
Being a friend of Countess Wimpffen, she chanced 
to be present at one of the meetings between Ru- 
dolph and Marie Vecsera, which always took place 
at the Countess' house. All three ladies, that is to 
say Countess Wimpffen, Countess Chorinsky and 
my mother, had long known Baroness Vecsera, 
Marie's mother, ever since she had been known as 
the Greek Princess Baldazzi; before her sister had 
thrown herself into the Danube. 

I can remember many long evenings when we 
discussed the tragedy of Meyerling at Modling, 
near Vienna, in a Jdgerhaus or shooting-box be- 
longing to the Sovereign Prince of Liechtenstein. 
That is to say, they discussed it among themselves, 
for I was little more than a boy. Besides my 
mother. Countess Chorinsky-Mittrowsky and her 
husband, the Lord Chief Justice, were there; also 
an Italian nobleman. Count Ceschi di Santa Croce, 
Grand Prior of the Order of Malta. 

During those evenings, listening to the talk of 



52 Francis Joseph and His Court 

those who had known the very souls of the dramatis 
personas, all the secrets behind the scenes, and all 
sorts of details discovered by the secret police, I 
lived the whole tragedy over again, and I under- 
stood why the public could never penetrate its mys- 
teries; for the lips of those who knew were sealed. 

But now, after so many years, there is no reason 
for continuing to hide what really happened, even 
though the new light may cast much responsibility 
upon a woman who can still plead many extenuat- 
ing circumstances : namely, the greatness of the of- 
fence which had been put upon her ; perhaps too, a 
failure to foresee the tragic consequences of her 
revenge. I allude to the lady who is now only 
Countess Lonyay and ought to have been Empress 
of Austria. 

Stephanie, the widow of the Archduke. 

Rudolph: According to history, he was a very 
intelligent, extravagant, sensual prince. He was 
brought up very strictly and his instincts led him 
to rebel against authority. He was not a politician, 
for he always said just what he thought in the frank- 
est way and was quite incapable of concealing his 
political likes and dislikes. For instance, he went 
off ostentatiously to hunt bears in Transylvania at 



Truth of the Tragedy of Meyerling 53 

the time when the German Emperor William II. 
came to visit the Court of Vienna ; on the other hand 
he was indiscreet enough to admire the Italians. 
He was a great lover of nature, and he paid his 
court to nature, galloping across snowy plains, com- 
passing sea and land, climbing mountains in pur- 
suit of sunrises and sunsets, crashing through for- 
ests after a wounded bird or a rare songster. He 
was at the same time a scientist and a poet. But, 
history will relate, he did not know how to govern 
his passions. He was violent and quarrelsome. He 
had innumerable love-affairs and made no secret 
about any of them. Even matrimony imposed no 
restraint upon him. He persevered in his vices with 
redoubled ardour, flaunting his infidelities in his 
wife's face like a banner of liberty ; he even threat- 
ened to divorce her in order to marry a plain, al- 
most humble girl to whom he was madly attached. 
There was never an orgy in which he failed to take 
part, never a pleasure that he did not want to try. 
He died a victim of his dissolute life at the Castle 
of Meyerling in his thirty-first year. 

That is what history will relate. But I imagine 
that a drama far deeper than that of his death may 
perhaps have been hidden away in his life. Hav- 



54 Francis Joseph and His Court 

ing in his veins the decrepit blood of a family that 
goes back a thousand years, and a latent madness 
through his mother, Elisabeth of Bavaria ; breaking 
all the laws of morals and tradition in a Court 
where morals and tradition are placed above the 
dogmas of religion; despising his future crown in 
comparison with drunken orgies: this strange 
Prince seems to me to afford one of the most com- 
plicated and interesting characters of modern times. 

Stephanie: Daughter of Leopold, King of the 
Belgians, was very young when she married Arch- 
duke Rudolph of Austria. Some said it was a love- 
match, but I shall have something to say about 
the real political reasons later on. 

Anyhow, it was a very unhappy marriage. 
When she came to Vienna, Stephanie cannot have 
failed to remember her aunt, the unfortunate Char- 
lotte. Even the Emperor, though he had secretly de- 
sired the match, did not look upon her with favour, 
and the Empress Elisabeth always treated her very 
coldly. She also suffered a good deal on account of 
the matrimonial misadventures of her sister Louise, 
the wife of Philip of Coburg, her husband's most 
constant associate in debauch. Above all, there was 
the terrible infidelity of Rudolph. One can under- 




Photograph, Underwood <fc Underwood, N. Y. 

Princess Stephanie of Belgium 



Truth of the Tragedy of Meyerling 55 

stand how the Archduchess must have locked up in 
her heart whole store-houses of hate. Then there 
were low intriguers always trying to take advantage 
of her discontents, and they induced her to shoot 
an arrow that travelled much further than she had 
ever anticipated. That she certainly regretted. 

I knew Stephanie. She used to take a walk every 
day in the beautiful Dobbelhof Park, which ad- 
joined Baden near Vienna, and she preferred soli- 
tary paths. I often went there with my mother. 
And one day when she was specially sad, Stephanie 
sat down on a bench and took me on her knees. I 
gazed at her with the indiscreet, scrutinising wonder 
of a child : I wanted to read the face of the future 
Empress. It was not beautiful, but full of expres- 
sion. The chin and nose had a manly strength that 
contrasted with her pink complexion and her great 
floods of fair hair. Then I saw only her big staring 
eyes of a greyish blue that seemed to reflect the sky. 
Now, when I try to recall her, they seem to blend 
themselves in one, and it watches me, a huge, 
strange, inexorable eye. 

Marie Vecsera: A child, but by no means an 
ordinary child. She was the daughter of the ex- 
otic Princess Baldazzi and the providential Baron 



56 Francis Joseph and His Court 

Vecsera. Some think she was the Emperor's daugh- 
ter and there was certainly a very remarkable like- 
ness between her and Kudolph. But we need not 
complicate a drama that is already quite sad enough. 
Though her mother was rich and lived in a splendid 
palace, she was not received at Court or by high 
society on account of the old scandal. She was a 
mere shadow in the social world, and Marie was 
ambitious. There has been endless talk about her 
relations with Archduke Rudolph, but I do not 
know how much of it is true. Did she dream of be- 
coming Empress one day? Who knows? Was 
Kudolph really in love with her or merely carried 
away by sensual desires? Who knows? Let us 
suppose that, like other girls, she was divided into 
three equal parts governed by her heart, her senses 
and her ambition. Was she pretty? Most beauti- 
ful according to the legend, but that is not true. 
She was short and rather stumpy, but she had a 
white skin and pretty, sad, black eyes. 

THE OTHER CHARACTERS 

Not all of them. I will just allude to two — ^the 
one who began and the other who completed the 
drama. 



Truth of the Tragedy of Meyerling 57 

The prologue and the epilogue of Greek trage- 
dies. 

Countess Anastasia Wimp ff en : An old countess 
of the Empire, which means that her title was also 
good for Germany; an experienced courtier who 
had fallen into disgrace and who was unhappy about 
her exclusion from the higher society of Vienna, 
the more so as she possessed a fine palace and a big 
fortune. Despairing of recovering the good graces 
of the old Emperor, she was glad to secure those 
of his naughty son by affording him opportunities 
of meeting the little Baroness in her salon, which 
the wits dubbed the salon des ref usees. She became 
a sort of bridesmaid to the Archduke's intrigues. 
But her refined, unscrupulous mind did not exclude 
remorse. For, when she had vainly sought to ar- 
rest the consequences of her work, she sought ob- 
livion in the quick death provided by cyankali. 
How dramatically, we shall see by and by. 

Last comes Baron Baldazzi, the real protagonist, 
the deus eoo machina of the tragedy. He was sum- 
moned to Vienna by the busy Baron S one day 

when Francis Joseph was making violent efforts to 
break off the scandalous affair between Rudolph 
and Marie Vecsera. Baldazzi was to have played 



58 Francis Joseph and His Court 

the part assigned to Baron Vecsera twenty years 
previously when the latter married the former's sis- 
ter or cousin (I forget which), the Greek Princess 
Baldazzi. Instead of playing that part, Baron 
Baldazzi played that of the avenger. 

And so it came to pass that the soft, discreet ori- 
ental saloons of the Countess Anastasia were filled 
with silence during the first whispers of love be- 
tween a romantic girl and a chivalrous Archduke. 
They certainly respected the proprieties at the out- 
set, and I like to think that it was so. 

Rudolph was weary of waiting for the crown, 
tired of a wife he did not love, bored perhaps by the 
monotony of his dissolute life, and it was natural 
that he should find it sweet to sit in a corner of the 
silent saloon beside a girl who was neither venal 
nor a courtesan. Nor could the girl fail to appre- 
ciate the fascination of the personality and conver- 
sation of Rudolph, who was a poet as well as her 
future Emperor. 

Countess Anastasia sat smiling to herself in an- 
other room, full of honest pleasure. 

But the chaste and romantic love soon degener- 
ated into a passion worthy of Heliogabalus and 
Messalina. How? We do not know. We cannot 



Truth of the Tragedy of Meyerling 59 

penetrate the unfathomable soul of this most 
strange Archduke. Marie was .certainly led on by 
him. When? We do not know that either. Prob- 
ably when the daily meetings developed into nightly 
ones. The Archduke was seen to go in and out of 
Countess WimpfFen's house at the small hours. 
Many cautious figures were already dogging all his 
footsteps. 

And when every voluptuous artifice had been ex- 
hausted, the voluptuous circle was extended. That 
was one of Rudolph's most conspicuous forms of 
degeneration ; his soul loved solitude, but for orgies 
he required company. 

The scandal spread, for Rudolph was not the 
man to keep his adventures secret. But too many 
people were now affected and the affair could not 
have a pleasant ending. 

Archduchess Stephanie, for reasons already men- 
tioned, was like a cloud charged with electricity, 
ready at any moment to launch her thunderbolt. 
The infidelity had been too patent, it was in every- 
body's mouth, and it shook her out of her usual at- 
titude of proud contempt. Miserable agents volun- 
teered their services, informed her of times, places 
and persons, and gradually increased their ascen- 



6o Francis Joseph and His Court 

dancy over her mind. Among them was a man 
called Schaeffer, manager of the Argus detective 
agency. It is interesting to notice, among the 
Princess' innumerable photographs, the deep rav- 
ages which rancour, if not grief, worked on her 
characteristic face at this time. 

Francis Joseph and his uncompromising parti- 
sans were more angry about this affair than they 
had been about any of the past follies of the Arch- 
duke. Marie's mother, the sovereign's old flame, 
was seized with a holy horror of this intrigue and 
set to work to end it with surprising zeal. She 
sought an audience of the old Emperor, and this 
was much commented upon. It was now that her 
brother or cousin, Baron Baldazzi, appeared on the 
scenes and was betrothed to the wayward girl. But 
he was not the man one might have thought. He 
soon proved to be rather the guardian of the family 
honour than the convenient bridegroom. He in- 
stalled the reign of terror. 

But none of these events could alarm Archduke 
Rudolph. He reasoned with Countess Wimpif en, 
who was growing frightened about the possible con- 
sequences of the affair ; he defied his wife, who was 
now being informed of everything by Schaeffer; he 



Truth of the Tragedy of Meyerling 6i 

soothed Baron Vecsera with flattery and diamonds; 
Marie succeeded for some time in calming rather 
than deceiving the jealous Baldazzi; and so they 
continued their amours undismayed. 

Countess Anastasia shut up her palace in a panic. 
Stephanie, with her hair on end like a Fury, rushed 
about with her detectives, and urged the Emperor 
to employ the police to stop the scandal. She seems 
also to have had a very violent scene with Marie's 
old father. 

And one fine day, Archduke Rudolph, who had 
quite made up his mind not to be bullied, set out 
for his shooting-box at Meyerling in the neighbour- 
ing Wienerwald. 

He did not go alone or secretly, but set out in 
his usual landau, which was driven by the faithful 
cabman who took him to all his orgies. Marie Vec- 
sera was with him. Other carriages followed with 
the usuaPboon-companions of his shooting and other 
expeditions: his Cousin Philip of Coburg, Count 
Hoyos, two stalwart Alpenjager and many good 
bottles of champagne. 

The Castle of Meyerling is about 18 miles from 
Vienna. The road passes through mountains and 
plains to Modling, then creeps into a wooded val- 



62 , Francis Joseph and His Court 

ley, passes Gaaden and the Abbey of Heiligen- 
kreuz, and rises to the solitude of the pine-trees of 
Meyerling. Thence there is another valley that 
goes down to the little town of Baden and the rail- 
way from. Vienna. The Archduke's carriages were 
seen on their way through Modling and Gaaden. 

Meanwhile a conference was going on between 
the Archduchess Stephanie and Schaeffer at Vi- 
enna, and this was immediately followed by another 
conference between Schaeffer and Baldazzi and 
Marie's mother. It is difficult to reconstruct their 
conversation. There was certainly no mandate for 
murder on the part of either Stephanie or Marie's 
mother. There was probably an incitement to pro- 
voke a scandal or even to use threats. But Baron 
Baldazzi exceeded any such instructions by a very 
long way. 

He took a Bemington rifle, perhaps under pre- 
tence of a shooting-expedition, and set out in the 
afternoon by the Siidbahn railway to Baden. There 
he took a carriage and drove up the Helenenthal, 
the other valley leading to Meyerling. But he sent 
back the carriage before he reached Meyerling. 
Then he took to the woods, where he was seen by 
two monks from Heiligenkreuz. 



Truth of the Tragedy of Meyerling 63 

Night was closing in. 

The usual orgy took place at Meyerling that eve- 
ning to the accompaniment of much champagne, 
while the snow reigned over the whole world with- 
out. 

But what of the coachman who said he wandered 
about the woods and saw the two lovers singing sad 
songs at the window? Perhaps he never said so. 
Perhaps he wanted to disconcert inquisitive chat- 
terers. But it may have been true. Rudolph had 
such an odd mind that there was nothing im- 
probable about his devoting the intervals of an 
orgy to dreaming at the window, to the melancholy 
contemplation of the shadows of the night, to an 
exchange of whispers with the solitary pine tree 
which stood like a sentinel at the side of the road. 

And it was from that very pine-tree that death 
came to them. 

For at a very late hour, Baron Baldazzi stood 
beneath it. There is a ditch between the road and 
the Castle, so that the trunk of the pine-tree is on a 
level with the first floor. Baldazzi looked through 
the window and beheld a revolting scene in the flick- 
ering light. In the background, on a bed in an al- 
cove, the Archduke Rudolph and Marie Vecsara 



64 Francis Joseph and His Court 

slept in each other's arms. On a divan, on the floor, 
even under the table, lay Philip of Coburg, Count 
Hoyos and the two Alpenjagers, all dead drunk. 
Empty bottles of champagne were scattered about 
all over the place. The candles were expiring in 
their sockets. 

Then Baldazzi fired without the least hurry or 
excitement. He fired at his betrothed and at the 
heir to the Austrian throne. He was a crack shot 
and he struck both through the heart. 

Then he was seized with mad fury. He threw 
away his gun, which was afterwards found by the 
servants of the Abbey, climbed down into the ditch, 
swung himself up to the low window whose panes 
had been broken, entered the room, seized an empty 
bottle and battered the heads of the two dead lovers. 
Bits of glass were afterwards found right inside 
their brains. 

Very early the same morning, Count Hoyos and 
Philip of Coburg hurried oiF to Vienna to announce 
the death of the Archduke. 

That is the true story of the tragedy of Meyer- 
ling. 

Naturally the police stopped its feverish secret 
inquiries as soon as it found they were leading it 



Truth of the Tragedy of Meyerling 65 

where it did not want to go. Baldazzi went off to 
France, but without the least hurry. The 
Baldazzi and Vecsera families had to sell their 
property and leave Austria; even the memory of 
their names was blotted out, but all with the dis- 
creetest silence. Countess Anastasia Wimpffen, 
tormented by remorse, poisoned herself with cyan- 
kali, a terrible drug. She chose to die on the very 
divan where, through her good offices, Kudolph and 
Marie had enjoyed their first embrace. She was 
found all shrivelled up. 

Rudolph was buried in the Church of the Capu- 
cins at Vienna, Marie Vecsera at the Abbey of Hei- 
ligenlcreuz near Meyerling. 

I went one day to Meyerling in the year 1902 
and I stood under the pine-tree. 

There was bright sunshine out of doors, and only 
the dim light of a few candles in the room, so that 
I could scarcely distinguish anything. Then I 
gradually made out an altar over there, where the 
alcove used to be, and a light hung from the ceil- 
ing, and images of saints of the Hapsburg family 
stood out rigidly against the walls. The room had 
been turned into a chapel. 

Then I distinguished human shapes all bowed 



(i(> Francis Joseph and His Court 

and humble: poor old men and women who are 
supported by the Emperor so that they may pray 
for the dead Archduke. 

They take turns to pray, night and day. They 
must pray only for him. But I feel sure that some 
of the old women pray also for the other victim in 
their secret hearts. For she alone, poor Marie, died 
there perhaps for love. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE PECULIARITIES AND VIRTUES 
OF THE EMPRESS ELISABETH 

I REMEMBER a summcr day when I was returning 
from the grand manoeuvres. We were all soldiers 
in the railway carriage. Outside were melancholy 
plains, vast parallelograms of corn, the blue curve 
of a river, a light grey sketch of mountains far far 
away. Some of the Slavs looked dreamily out of 
the window with half-closed eyes, while most of us, 
merry youths from Vienna, sang one song after an- 
other. 

There was a long wait at a little station. Then 
some officers came into the carriage. 

"You must stop singing," they said — "the Em- 
press has been assassinated!" 

I won't deny that there was a certain feeling of 

shock and we all became respectfully silent. But no 

one was distressed. The Slavs went on looking out 

of the window, watching the fields speed by; some 

Hungarians may have said a few words of sym- 

67 



68 Francis Joseph and His Court 

pathy; I, who had seen her so many times, realised 
a vague void because I should see her no more. 
Presently, young Ripper, son of the Court hatter, 
observed with a shrug, "Sad affair. But the Em- 
press always seemed a foreigner." 

That was all. 

That summer day in 1898 the Empress Elisabeth 
of Austria had been killed at Geneva by the Italian 
Luccheni. 

There were a good many biographies of the dead 
Empress, fairly accurate as far as they went. A 
strange woman who knew few joys in her life, full 
of the torments of her dolours and her latent mad- 
ness. But the biographies only mentioned such ec- 
centricities as had filtered through the closed walls 
of the Hofburg and a hundred other Imperial 
castles. 

I can tell you a great deal more, for my mother 
was lady-in-waiting during many years, and my 
aunt. Countess Marie Festetics-Tolna was the Em- 
press' devoted companion in her saddest hours. I 
can describe the character of one who was called to 
the Austrian throne and yet persisted in remaining 
a stranger to her family and people. 
, Many, many years ago, there lived in Bavaria a 



Peculiarities and Virtues of Elisabeth 69 

certain Duke Maximilian of the illustrious House 
of Wittelsbach, which counts the three Ottos among 
its forbears. This Duke belonged to the younger 
branch. His title was Herzog in Bayern, for that 
of Herzog von Bayern belongs only to the reigning 
House. A very great noble with many children and 
not much money. One of his daughters was very 
pretty and very odd. Her prospects were to grow 
old in some turreted castle, or to grow fat as the 
abbess of some convent, or to marry some German 
Count. But destiny ordained otherwise. One eve- 
ning at Ischl, a fashionable watering-place near 
Salzburg, she met the young Emperor of Austria 
at a ball. He was very evidently enamoured of the 
quaint, graceful girl and committed the great in- 
discretion of dancing with her all the evening. 

He was then twenty-two and she was barely six- 
teen. He was a powerful sovereign and she was a 
poor little princess. For all that, he asked for her 
hand and their wedding was speedily celebrated. 

Thus did Elisabeth become Empress. 

But Francis Joseph's choice was a bad one, al- 
though, for once in his life, he had allowed himself 
to be guided by his heart. Perhaps that is the rea- 
son why the sovereign, realising how badly he had 



70 Francis Joseph and His Court 

been advised by Mr. Cupid, proceeded to place his 
heart under lock and key, never to open its doors 
again. The life of Francis Joseph is one long, ter- 
rible fairy-tale and this idyll of Ischl with all its 
matrimonial consequences affords one of its most 
incredible chapters. To begin with, the new Em- 
press was poor, — that is to say, financially far in- 
ferior to the ladies of the Austrian aristocracy, who 
behaved very impertinently to her on that account. 
Secondly, she was a descendant of the House of 
Wittelsbach and the Counts of Schyren, and if she 
did not inherit monies she inherited a decided ten- 
dency to madness. Our thoughts turn at once to her 
mad and gifted cousin, Louis II. of Bavaria, King 
and musician. The ties of relationship between the 
electoral House of Bavaria and the Hapsburg-Lor- 
raines only aggravated this tendency. Perhaps, if 
he had had a different mother, Rudolph might have 
escaped the tragedy of Meyerling. 

When Elisabeth entered the Hofburg as a sov- 
ereign, she must have relegated her previous life to 
the domain of fable. 

"Once upon a time there was a strange, beautiful 
princess, and a fair young monarch, very rich and 
very powerful, fell wildly in love with her . . ." 



Peculiarities and Virtues of Elisabeth 71 

She would ponder over memories of an old grand- 
mother who sat by an enormous mediaeval chim- 
ney, while wintry winds raged round the melancholy 
Bavarian castle, undressing the pine-trees for pa- 
tient snows to tuck them up again. Such memories 
seemed very vague and far away at first, then she 
sighed for them with a sense of home-sickness. The 
crown of Maria Theresa is no light burden. 

What were the relations of Francis Joseph and 
Elisabeth during the first years of their marriage? 
The biographies related that two children, Gisella 
and Rudolph, soon made their appearance; clouds 
also made a speedy appearance on the Imperial 
horizon. But we will first pause to consider the 
shadow which the clouds cast upon the pretty face 
of the youthful sovereign. 

My mother was invited to the first Court function 
of the new Empress. Later on, during the years 
of misfortune, she would often recite all the particu- 
lars so vividly that, when I close my eyes, I seem 
to have been present myself. 

The great hall was furnished and decorated in 
the days of INIarie Antoinette. The style is that of 
Louis XVL, but Vienna has disguised it with much 
gilding and all sorts of painted flowers, yielding to 



72 Francis Joseph and His Court 

a mania for the baroque. All the halls are very 
like what children dream of when you tell them 
fairy-tales about royal palaces. They are so huge 
that they seem to have neither walls nor ceilings; 
you see nothing but a sparkle of light in a cloud of 
gold, and the night appears terrible through the 
great cathedral windows. The floor is like a glass 
mosaic, and a solitary page seems to be suspended 
in space as he floats about on an errand. 

'Now let us people these halls with the marvellous 
crowd which throngs round a powerful Court. 
Knights and dames await the entrance of the Sov- 
ereigns. There is a glitter of jewels and gold ana 
silver lace, all according to rule, pearls reflect them- 
selves softly like the moon in a lake, mantles of 
many colours appear like a cloud of butterflies. 
There are thousands of candles up aloft. Some- 
times a dash of red strikes the eye against the back- 
ground of white and gold; like a poppy in a field of 
corn. There are many pale faces in the solemn at- 
mosphere. 

I recall Princess Schwarzenberg among the great 
ladies. Her dress is of brown gold sewn with hun- 
dreds and hundreds of rubies. The Princess of 
Liechtenstein is in point d'Alen^on picked out with 



Peculiarities and Virtues of Elisabeth 73 

turquoises. My mother wears satin of crushed 
strawberry embroidered all over with sprigs of gold, 
a dress I have since seen among her greatest treas*- 
ures. All three have the gorgeous Court mantle 
attached to their shoulders by jewelled clasps which 
differ according to the lady's rank. But the pre- 
cious stones are the marvel of the Court of Vienna. 
To this day, you must go to a high function at the 
Court of Vienna or Petrograd in order to behold 
the utmost profusion of historical gems. You 
might have seen Maria Theresa's girdle of brilliants 
and Marie Louise's head-dress of emeralds which 
has -not its equal in the world. It now belongs to 
the Princess of Montenuovo. 

And even the men have their note of colour. 
Here are the green and silver uniforms of the 
Truchsess, the sky-blue coats of the Chamberlains 
with gold lace worth some thousands of florins, the 
tiger-skins and purple trousers of the Royal Hun- 
garian guard, the scarlet and gold of the body- 
guard of archers, the wonderfully variegated cos- 
timies of the magnates of Hungary and Slavonia, 
the white cloaks and black crosses and silver hel- 
mets of the Knights of Malta, the full dress uni- 
forms of generals with light green plumes, the 



74 Francis Joseph and His Court 

Knights of the Order of the Golden Fleece with 
tunics of dark purple velvet, cloaks lined with er- 
mine and shoulders cascading priceless jewels. And 
the picture is all the more beautiful because the 
colours do not remain stationary but blend into 
one another and flit away from one another and 
form themselves into fresh kaleidoscopes. 

The glittering stream has come hither in many 
rivulets, each according to rank, up the various 
staircases of the Hofburg, where members of the 
Imperial family, ambassadors, dignitaries and of- 
ficials all have their different stairs. They range 
themselves to right and left of the first halls, form- 
ing a hedge along the walls according to compli- 
cated and inexorable rules. There is some talk in 
undertones, discreet whispering, the rustling of 
silk, the flutter of fans. Then even these subdued 
sounds are hushed. From afar off, approaching 
very slowly, you hear the Grand Master of the 
Ceremonies giving staccato stabs to the pavement 
with his staff of ivory and silver. Count Hunyady 
announces the entrance of the Court. The huge 
doors are thrown open, and the Imperial procession 
advances amid a solemn silence. The Emperor 
walks on his consort's right; others walk on their 



Peculiarities and Virtues of Elisabeth 75 

wives' left, an endless chain of Archdukes and 
Archduchesses, royal and Imperial Highnesses. 

But all eyes are fixed upon the new Empress. 

She is really very beautiful. Her dress is of cloth 
of gold with a train several yards long borne by 
six pages. Round her slim waist is the diamond 
girdle of fat Maria Theresa. On her neck is the 
famous brilliant of Charles the Bold, known as 
"the Florentine," an enormous drop of light. On 
her head is the Hapsburg crown of diamonds, worth 
say .£1,500,000. Her face is pale. She is trying to 
be gay, but her smile is sad. The men admire her, 
but the very rich and noble princesses of Austria 
cast a glance of disdain upon the upstart Empress. 

The Sovereigns pass through the halls, bowing 
coldly to the deeply bowing lines, and seat them- 
selves on their thrones. Then the courtiers advance 
in pairs and are honoured at most by half a minute's 
conversation. The Empress' brain is tired. It does 
not rise to the exigencies of a moment that is really 
a very important one for her. All will repeat her 
words during many days. But her words are al- 
ways the same for all the hundreds of ladies who 
are presented to her. She seems to have learned 
them by rote. "Do you like Vienna?" "I hope 



76 Francis Joseph and His Court 

you are well." "Did you dance much last season?" 
The courtiers smile sarcastically about it after- 
wards. Poor new Empress ! Her first appearance 
has not been a success. She has won no golden 
opinions, attracted no sympathies. 

It was not many years after the Imperial wed- 
ding. My mother was riding one day in the Prater 
with Princess Odescalchi, a good horsewoman, and 
a Marchesa Pallavicini. It was an October morn- 
ing; the trees were already bare or yellow, there 
was a smoky mist on the ground among their trunks, 
the atmosphere was silent in a sulky way. They 
rode along the Noble Avenue without talking. And 
in a byway which is separated from the main thor- 
oughfare by a thick hedge of trees they perceived 
another rider. It was the young Empress. She 
dismissed a couple of servants with an impatient 
nod, made her horse walk and then burst into vio- 
lent sobs. Naturally she imagined herself to be 
quite alone. 

My mother was deeply moved by the sight of 
this Empress seeking refuge among the trees to 
weep over her disillusions. Disillusions, or perhaps 
sorrows already. For she, poor little Princess with- 
out fortune or experience, extravagant, original 



Peculiarities and Virtues of Elisabeth 77 

and kind, coming to the Hofburg with a heart full 
of affection for her subjects, had soon found her- 
self repelled by those who were nearest to her per- 
son. She had felt very much alone under the tute- 
lage of the terrible Auersperg and Schwarzenberg 
dowagers, old mediatised sovereigns, and others 
much richer than herself. They carried on a cam- 
paign of pin-pricks, that sometimes drifted into 
open rebellion. Princess Schwarzenberg, one of 
the haughtiest and most inhuman, was finally 
threatened with exile by Francis Joseph, but I do 
not think she ever made her submission, and the 
whole conflict aiFected Elisabeth's spirits. It dried 
up all sympathy for her surroundings. She became 
reserved and suspicious. Her dislike of everything 
Austrian and more especially of everything Vien- 
nese undoubtedly dates from this period, as well as 
her devotion to Hungary. She was alone, and her 
loneliness was further embittered when she per- 
ceived she was losing the love of the fair monarch 
who had taken her away from her melancholy Ba- 
varian castle. Francis Joseph soon began to be 
unfaithful to her ; as the whole Court knew. It was 
this knowledge which hurt her most, for the open 
neglect of her husband was specially humiliating in 



78 Francis Joseph and His Court 

the presence of the rebellious and impertinent Vien- 
nese aristocracy. 

Shut up in her solitude, a stranger to her people, 
she gave way to various extravagances, without, 
however, becoming absolutely mad, like her poor 
cousins. 

First her unhealthy horror of all festivities, her 
refusal to appear in public, her ill-concealed hatred 
of Vienna were the worst symptoms. Then a roam- 
ing fit impelled her to run about among the water- 
ing-places of Europe. 

Elisabeth was a wonderful horsewoman. She was 
as much at home in the saddle among the wild slopes 
of the Carpathians as on the well-beaten paths of 
the Prater. She took part in all the great hunts 
arid often travelled half across Europe for stag- 
shooting or pigsticking. Nor was there anything 
strange about that, for the chase has been a royal 
sport from olden times. 

But her passion for equestrian exercises was car- 
ried to strange lengths which displeased her august 
consort, the Emperor. Indeed, it reached such a 
point that she used to put on a circus dress and 
dance and leap on the backs of her magnificent 
horses and break no less than six paper hoops in 



Peculiarities and Virtues of Elisabeth 79 

one bound. This in the little circus which she had 
built at her own expense in one of the courts of the 
Hofburg in spite of the strenuous opposition of 
Francis Joseph. 

Her infatuation for dogs was also extravagant 
and she kept almost as many of them as there are 
sands on the sea-shore. She treated them like 
Princes of the blood and great fun was made of this 
at Vienna. The Imperial carriages were often seen 
driving in the Prater with coachmen in liveries of 
state and the Empress' favourite dogs filling the 
seats of honour with great dignity. The back seats 
were occupied by old and faithful retainers, also in 
full livery. They had the strictest orders to take 
every care of Her Majesty's pets and always to ad- 
dress them in the third person. Worthy citizens 
who visited the park for an afternoon nap have 
vouched for such conversations as these: 

*'Will Bella have the goodness not to bark so 
much?" an old servant was heard to implore. 

And another would add, *'If Bella will not con- 
descend to desist, it will be my regretful duty to lay 
the matter before our most gracious Sovereign." 

But the dogs did not deign to reply. 

Her manias were all very innocent. For in- 



8o Francis Joseph and His Court 

stance, she had a great dislike of being photo- 
graphed. She would hide her face behind a fan 
with a quick characteristic movement whenever she 
caught sight of a camera. 

Her restlessness was constantly increasing. She 
often refused to see even her own children. It was 
impossible for her to remain long in one place. 

Then she took to expeditions on horseback to 
strange destinations at still stranger hours. My 
aunt, Countess Marie Festetics, has told me how 
she had sometimes to accompany her Imperial Maj- 
esty at mid-night in the most awful weather for 
mad gallops where they risked their necks at every 
step in order to reach the bald summit of the Kah- 
lenberg. 

Then, Heaven knows why, the mania for riding 
was suddenly succeeded by that for very long walks 
among the mountains near Vienna, or from one to 
another of the hundred Imperial castles. 

Having lived for four years in the castle of the 
sovereign Prince of Liechtenstein above Modling, 
near the castles of Meyerling, Luxemburg, Hietzin 
and Schonbrunn, I can follow step by step all the 
terrible expeditions which the Empress undertook 
with my aunt, Marie Festetics, who used to follow 



Peculiarities and Virtues of Elisabeth 8i 

her with her tongue hanging out of her mouth, like 
some unfortunate dog that has run too far and can 
run no more. 

Here is a typical excursion. The two ladies 
started one morning from the Castle of Schon- 
brunn. They crossed the gigantic Thiergarten, 
rested at Villa Quisisana, the house of Mark 
Twain's great friend, Dr. Winternitz, and climbed 
a mountain called Hollenstein (the infernal stone) , 
a granite peak amid many calcareous hills. They 
visited another big zoological garden, which be- 
longed to Prince Liechtenstein, and admired a po- 
etical little green lake there among the pines. They 
climbed to the top of the Amminger, came slowly 
down to the big ruins of Rauhenstein, and stopped 
at length at Jammerpepi's rustic little ice-cream 
shop, which is hidden away among the solitudes of 
the mountains. 

This Jammerpepi was a strange woman, as origi- 
nal as her nickname which means Wailing Jose- 
phine. This rich confectioner used to bewail her 
poverty at the top of her voice whenever she saw 
the Empress Elisabeth approach her house, and Her 
Majesty must have left a small fortune in the 
woman's hands. Finally, having walked down to 



S2 Francis Joseph and His Court 

the Castle of Weihlburg, the ladies came back to 
Vienna by carriage. But they had climbed two 
small mountains and covered more than twenty- 
five miles on foot. 

The Empress was indefatigable. Still, she would 
sometimes fling herself down upon the grass as 
though overcome by infinite weariness. Then she 
would suddenly jump to her feet and resume her 
walk. 

With her unrelenting aversion from all that was 
Austrian and Viennese, with her rather exaggerated 
affection for Hungary, the Empress exercised an 
influence which the public has not realised to this 
day. 

She laboured with great tenacity and ingenuity 
for the transfer of the Court from Vienna to Buda- 
pest. She, a German, had, perhaps unconsciously, 
attempted to carry out Bismarck's political testa- 
ment, which may be summed up in these few words : 
Eliminate Austria from Central Europe. The very 
severe restrictions which the Court of Vienna im- 
posed on itself during the years preceding her death 
were partly her work. She encouraged and fav- 
oured with all her influence every plan for interest- 
ing the House of Hapsburg substantially in the 



Peculiarities and Virtues of Elisabeth 83 

welfare of Hungary. The construction of the mar- 
vellous Imperial castle of Budapest, the restoration 
of the famous Hungarian castle of GodoUo, the 
many millions lent by the Imperial house to the 
half-ruined Hungarian nobles were all inspired by 
her. 

The Empress was at the same time extravagant 
and miserly, to the great perplexity of her biog- 
raphers. 

Again and again the imperial administrators pro- 
tested against her insane expenditure. Her jour- 
neys from one end of Europe to the other were very 
costly. Her long sojourns at Cap Martin Hotel 
near Mentone cost the Imperial treasury almost as 
much as an unfortunate war would have cost the 
State. She lavished amazing sums upon the con- 
struction of the famous Achilleion at Corfu, and it 
seemed as though she delighted to increase her ex- 
penditure according to the increasing vigour of the 
protests. 

The drop of rebel blood in Kudolph's veins cer- 
tainly came to him from his mother, the strange and 
beautiful Elisabeth, Empress of most Catholic Aus- 
tria, who (horrible to relate!), in defiance of God 
and men, actually worshipped the Hebrew poet 



84 Francis Joseph and His Court 

Heine, that same Heine who had dared to ridicule 
Marie Antoinette, Austria, Germany, and most of 
the rest of the world. Indeed, she did not hesitate 
to erect a magnificent monument to his memory in 
the courtyard of the Achilleion. 

And I may mention in parenthesis that when the 
Emperor William II. hastened to buy this palace 
at the cost of huge pecuniary sacrifices, it was not, 
as some have surmised, to honour the memory of 
the late Empress, but to have the right of destroy- 
ing the offensive statue, a right that he lost no time 
in exercising. 

The people of Vienna did not appreciate or love 
the Empress, but rather returned her obvious an- 
tipathy and spread many malicious rumours about 
her avarice. Whether there was any foundation 
for them I do not know, but I mention one of them 
as an example. It was said that the Empress fell 
into the big lake of Luxemburg one day and was 
rescued after great efforts by a genuine Viennese, 
whereupon, after some hesitation, she sent her sav- 
iour the enormous sum of twenty florins. 

The which proves how difficult it is to restrain 
evil tongues. 

But the most signal expression of Elisabeth's 



Peculiarities and Virtues of Elisabeth 85 

warm regard for all things Viennese lay in her em- 
ployment of Mr. Wetsehl. Tradesmen, courtiers 
and servants squealed about it for a time just as 
though their gracious Sovereign had trod on all 
their tails. 

He proved a great find for the Empress. 

For it was this terrible Mr. Wetsehl who intro- 
duced the fiercest and most incredible economy into 
the Court administration. He devoted all his ener- 
gies to one object, the abolition of all illicit profits 
at Court, from those of the highest dignitaries to 
those of the meanest bootblacks. You can imagine 
what a frightful business this must have seemed. 

For illicit profits were by no means few and far 
between at the Hofburg. Let me edify you by cit- 
ing an example. One day in some year or other of 
the eighteenth century, the Empress Maria Theresa 
found herself slightly indisposed. So after con- 
sulting her Dutch doctor, she ordered a bottle of 
sweet Spanish wine for her dinner. Two or three 
florins did not seem to matter much, for the House 
of Hapsburg is by no means poor. But what does 
matter is that, from that day down to the com- 
mencement of Mr. Wetschl's terrible administra- 
tion, the bottle of sweet Spanish wine continued to 



86 Francis Joseph and His Court 

figure regularly on the daily accounts of the Court. 
The bottle no longer appeared on the Imperial table 
because Maria Theresa has now been dead quite a 
long time, and the two or three florins must have 
accumulated to a very big sum at compound in- 
terest in the course of a century. But the abolition 
of this item was regarded as sacrilege. The cour- 
tiers of the Hapsburgs are all conservatives. 

Another example. The very abundant leavings 
of the Hoftafel, such as venison, boxes of sweets at 
twenty or thirty crowns each, creams and fruits of 
every kind, the choicest wines, were all sold by the 
servants, at fairly stiff* prices, to the Court caterers, 
who sold them again to the Imperial administrators 
or to some rich family with ambitions to rival the 
Hofburg. 

The terrible Wetschl abolished this custom too. 
Naturally the lamentations of the servants went up 
to Heaven, and Vienna enjoyed a good laugh. 

Thii'd and last examples. The Imperial gardens 
are of veiy great value. The rarest water-lilies, 
lotuses, magnolias, roses and fuchsias (such fav- 
ourites with Elisabeth that she had jewels made to 
resemble them), all the marvellous flowers were at 
the disposal of the servants and more particularly 



Peculiarities and Virtues of Elisabeth 87 

of the ladies-in-waiting. Even here the terrible 
Wetschl appeared with severe regulations. One of 
his first victims was my aunt, Countess Festetics, 
who picked a fev/ Gloire de France roses and was 
promptly made to pay a fine. The courtiers pro- 
tested loudly and the blame for all these innovations 
was laid at the Empress' door. 

It was natural that all the distrust and dislike 
should make the Empress feel more and more of a 
stranger at Court. The poor woman had no one 
to support her there. She could hope nothing from 
her family, for her branch had been superseded in 
Bavaria by the hostile branch of the Prince Re- 
gent Luitpold. He had been the most strenuous 
adversary of her unhappy cousins, Louis II., who 
was drowned at night in the lake of Stahremberg, 
and his brother who died mad in the little castle of 
Fiirstenried. Nor could she rely on her new Aus- 
trian family, whose chief characteristic was a canny 
egotism which pursued its erotic and financial ca- 
prices. Nor on her consort, the Emperor Francis 
Joseph, whose vacillating and uncertain attitude 
was quite useless for safeguarding her interests in 
the face of his people and Court. 

And finally the tragic death of her beloved son 



88 Francis Joseph and His Court 

Kudolph came as a crowning grief to a mind bowed 
down with misery and madness. 

Her mourning assumed proportions that sug- 
gested mania. She always dressed in black and 
would never again consent to appear in public. As 
far as I can remember, there was only one occasion 
on which she attended a State ceremony, and that 
was when Nicholas II. came to Vienna in 1895, 
in the course of his tour of visits on ascending the 
throne. Great efforts were required to induce the 
Empress to appear at the Hoftafel, and when she 
did appear it was in a dress that loudly proclaimed 
her grief, — black velvet and red poppies, flowers of 
death and sleep. Her behaviour was no less 
strange. The toasts had been previously prepared 
by the respective ministers of the two great sov- 
ereigns. Francis Joseph rose first and recited his 
speech word for word, but the Empress, though she 
rose to her feet, omitted to raise her glass. And 
great was the sensation, when the Czar, who had 
noted the fact, said in reply, "I drink to the health 
of his Majesty the Emperor and King, and to that 
of her Majesty the Empress." Only this and noth- 
ing more. 

I remember that on the following day, a Vienna 




Nicholas II. Ex-tsar of Russia 



Peculiarities and Virtues of Elisabeth 89 

newspaper made the following comment : "The at- 
titude of the Emperor of Russia finally dissipates 
the clouds which still obscured his real intentions." 
First skirmishes preluding the gigantic war of to- 
day. 

Her last years were very sad. She fled from place 
to place in the vain pursuit of oblivion. 

And one day, while she was watching the ripples 
of the lake of Geneva with eyes still strange and 
beautiful, a blade stabbed her through the heart, and 
oblivion came at last. 



CHAPTER V 

THE ADVENTURES OF LOUISE OF 
COBURG 

It was certainly a most romantic story. We have 
a very rich and very noble duke who is notorious for 
every sort of escapade; a still nobler consort who 
goes off with some little officer and squanders mil- 
lions ; a sensational lawsuit over forged bills of ex- 
change; a forcible capture and confinement in a 
mad-house ; a melodramatic flight, not with a rope- 
ladder and a white horse with padded hoofs, but 
with a snorting, flashing 120 H. P. that rushes the 
guilty couple right across modest, virtuous Ger- 
many ; the wild storms of a raging husband and an 
old Emperor; a whole Court put to the rack and the 
pillory. Was there ever such material for the writ- 
ers of novels and plays? 

Many smart and ugly things have indeed been 
written round the whole affair. During their darker 
days, both Louise and Mattassich published various 
little books to proclaim their grievances to the 

90 



Adventures of Louise of Coburg 91 

world. You may probably find them slumbering 
in some library under a shroud of dust. It is the 
business of dust, like that of grass in cemeteries, to 
cover up dead things. 

But I am not going to relate the whole story of 
Louise over again. I want to mention only one 
chapter, which is undoubtedly the most important 
but which, for many reasons, has not received suf- 
ficient publicity. It deals with the part played by 
the Hapsburgs and the Court of Vienna in this 
romance and, as usual, that part is utterly lacking 
in sincerity and generosity. For the misfortunes of 
poor, eccentric Louise of Coburg were only one 
among the many effects of the great dynastic and 
political duel between the Houses of Austria and 
Eelgium, about which I shall have something to say 
later on. 

Some years ago I went to Koswig. 

It is a little village in Saxony, smiling, clean and 
insignificant, like all other villages in Germany if 
we except those on the Rhine. There are square 
fields of green or brown or yellows, that might have 
been mapped out with a ruler; clumps of pines; as 
many mountains as you please, but in Germany the 
mountains are all absurd. However, I did not go 



92 Francis Joseph and His Court 

to Koswig to admire the mountains, but to see my 
ibrother Hadrian. 

For Koswig has the honour of possessing the fa- 
mous madhouse of the aristocracy, with the no less 
famous Aulic Doctor Pierson at its head, an insti- 
tution that shelters all the noblest lunatics of Aus- 
tria and Germany. My brother Hadrian has been 
shut up there for many years. He is not really 
mad, merely a man who has struggled for a right- 
eous cause to the point of exhaustion. Lunatics, as 
you know very well, are usually brave and sincere 
folk. And courage and sincerity are dangerous 
qualities when you happen to have a rich, powerful 
uncle like Count Oliver de Resseguier, the man 
whom you will remember as the agent of the Vien- 
nese Court when the Emperor Maximilian was be- 
trayed. 

I am not now going to relate how and why my 
eldest brother came to be shut up at Koswig by his 
uncle, for it is merely a painful incident in a long 
family quarrel. You can make a shrewd guess when 
you remember how and why Princess Louise of 
Coburg was shut up in the same establishment. 

Well, I was affectionately welcomed by Hadrian 
and looked at rather askance by Dr. Pierson, who 



Adventures of Louise of Coburg 93 

is never very happy when his patients receive visits. 
It is a friendly sort of place, something between an 
Alpine sanatorium and a gilded prison. There 
are dainty summer-houses, gay pergolas, fresh, fra- 
grant shrubberies. No walls obtrude themselves 
anywhere, for it is one of Dr. Pierson's chief cares 
that his beloved guests shall never feel themselves 
imprisoned by aught save the trees and the skies. 

I spent the afternoon on a terrace with my 
brother. We gazed in silence at an unnaturally 
green hill all sprinkled with villas, those dear Ger- 
man villas with their red or slate roofs, prim walls 
and clumps of pines, like cardboard toys with trees 
glued to wooden discs. Keal lunatics were strolling 
about the garden, and we knew they were real luna- 
tics because they were happier and more talkative 
than ourselves. Then from a cottage opposite came 
a woman like Juno, no longer very young but with 
a strong, handsome face and golden hair that glis- 
tened in the sunshine. I recognised Louise of Co- 
burg at once, though she was a good deal changed. 
She had the air of one who feels very home-sick 
for freedom, has some grievance against mankind, 
searches the horizon in a hopeless effort to see some- 



94 Francis Joseph and His Court 

thing beyond the pergolas and pines. She greeted 
us with a nod. 

Then I asked my brother about her and he told 
me how she had told him her troubles and confided 
her grievances against Dr. Pierson. When I went 
away in the evening, I thought a great deal about 
the poor Princess shut up in the gilded cage of 
Koswig by the intrigue of a Court. I understood 
her hatred for her persecutors and her love for the 
man who had sacrified all for her sake and now 
languished in a prison more terrible than hers. I 
wished she could be free, but that was not to be 
for years. 

In case there remains somebody who does not 
know who Princess Louise was and why she started 
the big scandals which made three Courts boil over, 
I will give a short sketch of her career. 

Louise Marie Amelie, born in February, 1858, is 
the eldest of the three daughters of Leopold II., 
the late King of the Belgians: Louise, Stephanie 
and Clementine. Like Stephanie (Rudolph's 
widow), Louise made an apparently excellent 
match. Although Philip Mary of Saxe-Coburg- 
Gotha, whom she married on the 4th of February, 
1875, was not a crowned head, he was one of the 



Adventures of Louise of Coburg 95 

richest and most influential Princes in Europe. As 
to riches, he surpassed most sovereigns. His quali- 
ties were varied. For instance, he became some- 
thing very like the keeper of the consciences of 
Francis Joseph and Rudolph, and he was also the 
most assiduous companion of Rudolph's debauches. 

The two sisters, Louise and Stephanie, both be- 
trayed with offensive frankness by their respective 
husbands and received rather than welcomed by an 
unfriendly Court at Vienna, suffered a long time 
together and then meditated revenge in very differ- 
ent forms. Stephanie's revenge was tragic, Louise's 
almost comic, but each revenge cost the Belgian 
princesses much suff*ering. 

Louise was not only betrayed but ill-treated by 
her husband. All the most innocent expressions of 
her strange, clever character were thwarted with 
puerile contempt. Her nature, however, was too 
proud to give way to feminine bickerings and she 
endured her misfortunes with great moral rectitude 
from the outset. She answered the infidelity of her 
spouse with a calm disdain, which she extended to 
the Hapsburg Court. 

As we know, Philip of Coburg was found ob- 
scenely drunk after Rudolph's last orgy, and natur- 



96 Francis Joseph and His Court 

ally enough Louise soon heard all about it. This 
scandal, on the top of all that had gone before, 
proved the last drop which caused her cup to over- 
flow. And her revenge did not tarry very long. 

"No blood," she must have thought to herself. 
The old quick plan of using daggers and such 
things suits weak people who are in a great hurry 
because they are afraid of changing their minds. 
Moreover, it is an old-fashioned plan, in very bad 
taste. 

Princess Louise had a very strong nature, both 
physical and mental; her stature was that of a 
strong tower and her will was correspondingly in- 
flexible. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, 
says the wise old precept. Louise stored it well up 
in her mind and set to work to apply it with great 
diligence to her husband. She gave back off ence 
for offence, infidelity for infidelity. I can assure 
you that Philip of Coburg did not find it amusing 
at all. 

Thus was war declared between the princely pair. 

And all the aristocratic tea-parties of Austria, 
Belgium and Germany rang with the mighty blows 
which the Juno-like combatant delivered with mas- 



Adventures of Louise of Coburg 97 

terly skjll. It was an inexhaustible source of gos- 
sip. 

But meanwhile Louise's position became more 
and more difficult, for a new and serious event had 
occurred, one of those events which pass unobserved 
by the public, which at best can only perceive their 
consequences. It occurred to the Court of Vienna 
(whose campaign against Stephanie concluded vic- 
toriously when she became Countess Lonyay) that 
the two Belgian princesses would be far less for- 
midable if they had very little money instead of 
some dozens of millions. And they would certainly 
have had those millions on the death of their father, 
Leopold II. 

It was therefore wise to anticipate this danger, 
and the Court of Vienna is neither a babe nor a 
novice in such matters. The obvious plan was to 
fix a great gulf between Leopold II. and his daugh- 
ters. The first effort was directed to poisoning 
Leopold's mind with calumnies, then, as this had 
no effect, he was attacked in the weak joint of his 
harness. 

After all, there was nothing very strong about 
Leopold's devotion to the fair sex. There are so 
many sovereigns, even among the most magnificent. 



98 Francis Joseph and His Court 

who have only gone down to history because they 
loved many strange women. Are you going to re- 
prove Leopold for his weakness when he did so 
many useful things for his country? 

Well, the Court of Vienna began to explore this 
territory and soon found it very promising. By this 
I do not mean that Leopold had merely chosen 
odalisques more or less cleverly presented by more 
or less clever Austrian agents. 'No, because he had 
quite a personal taste of his own, more especially 
where the fair sex was concerned. But I can as- 
sure my readers that his last conquest, the best and 
truest of all, was none other than an instrument of 
Vienna. I allude to Baroness Vaughan. 

And it is well known that this woman not only 
succeeded in depriving Stephanie and Louise of the 
lion's share of their father's estate, but also induced 
Leopold to bury his hatred of Francis Joseph and 
Elisabeth and place himself as a blind instrument 
in the hands of the Coburgs and the Hapsburgs for 
the discomfiture of his own daughter Louise. 

At last Louise brandished her big sabre and de- 
livered her decisive stroke. Coburgs and Haps- 
burgs must have had many broken bones for a while. 

She united herself in the loudest and most scan- 



Adventures of Louise of Coburg 99 

dalous way with de Mattassich-Keglevich, a Croa- 
tian officer, squandered huge sums to the detriment 
of her rich husband, and circulated bills of exchange 
that reached fabulous figures — say, six or seven 
millions of crowns. These bills of exchange bore 
the forged signatures of Stephanie and Rudolph. 
The whole Teutonic world was filled with the in- 
credible doings of Princess Louise. This was just 
what she wanted, but it was by no means all. 

When the guarantors were questioned, they de- 
clared that they knew nothing about these signa- 
tures. The consequence was that all sorts of usurers 
gave way to paroxysms of savage cries in infernal 
chorus. Then the generous friends of the unhappy 
Louise started a lawsuit. 

The scandal was enormous. It damaged the 
reputation not only of Louise but also of her multi- 
millionaire husband and all the Imperial family. 
Louise was radiant with satisfied hate. 

But the lawsuit afforded her another satisfaction 
that was perhaps still more pleasing to her woman's 
heart, which had some excuse for being sceptical 
about love. And that was to find in the man she 
had chosen as her lover, perhaps rather as an in- 
strument of hate and vengeance tl^an through any 



100 Francis Joseph and His Court 

infatuation, a generous and self-sacrificing friend. 
In face of the position in which the policy of Vienna 
had placed Louise, de Mattassich-Keglevich 
aroused universal stupefaction by making a solemn 
declaration that he and he alone had forged all the 
bills of exchange. The whole of Austria knew 
that this was only a splendid lie and that he 
had spent all his little fortune on the Princess. 
Nevertheless (to the everlasting shame of Austrian 
justice), judges were found who, in their ambition 
for advancement, condemned de Mattassich-Keg- 
levich to seven years' imprisonment. 

In those days a great many of this man's photo- 
graphs passed through my hands. He looked in- 
teresting rather than handsome, but was a fine 
manly type before his imprisonment. After that 
he was so thin that it hurt one to see him. And I 
think many aristocratic ladies of Austria shed se- 
cret tears over his fate, moved by his noble sacrifice, 
and vainlj'^ sighed for a similar devotion on the 
part of their lovers. 

Meanwhile Philip of Coburg was not resting on 
his laurels, for his chief enemy was not yet defeated, 
and one never knows. . . . He obtained a sort of 
interdict against his wife and spent large sums of 



Adventures of Louise of Coburg loi 

money in filling all the world's newspapers with 
paragraphs and warnings. He had deprived the 
enemy of one weapon, but it was necessary to his 
complete peace that she should be imprisoned. 

Now we find Philip of Coburg engaged in mys- 
terious conclaves with Francis Joseph and Leopold 
II., now obsequiously carrying out the wishes of 
Austria as expressed through her gentle and well- 
paid agent. 

Meanwhile Princess Louise had been shadowed 
by detectives who followed her even into her bed- 
room in spite of every public protest, and one fine 
day, after a violent struggle, she was forcibly 
seized and packed off to Dr. Pierson's noble mad- 
house in Saxony. There she remained about seven 
years. 

She was very unhappy all that time. With her 
proud, restless, active nature, she found the life 
at Koswig more than sad. The invisible walls 
among the trees represented not only the limitation 
of her liberty but also the triumph of her enemies. 
And when humiliated hate knocks against the sul- 
len walls of a prison, it becomes a battering-ram 
that is rather painful to its owner. She had been 
accustomed, especially during recent years, to rush 



102 Francis Joseph and His Court 

from one capital to another; to find herself in one 
place only to have an instant desire to move on to 
the next ; and it is easy to understand how the prim 
pergolas of the garden, the long green hill with its 
cardboard villas and the everlasting sameness of the 
sky became so intolerable that she could not bear 
to look at them. She spent nearly all her time shut 
up in her cottage. She could not even comfort 
herself by discovering visions of great flowery fields 
in the wall-paper of her prison, or of a tranquil 
blue lake in a pool of rain-water that mirrored the 
sky, or of a virgin forest in a bowl of roses. She 
had no imagination and could dream of nothing but 
liberty. Or else she beheld something that her eyes 
could not see, a man who had loved her faithfully 
and was now enduring prison for her sake. 

Besides which, according to what my brother told 
me and what the Princess confirmed in a sort of 
biographical protest to the German public, she was 
treated rather badly by the Aulic Councillor Dr. 
Pierson. 

I remember, among the many episodes related to 
me by my brother, that the doctor used to reprove 
the Princess for her habit of scratching her head, 
threatening to strike her with his hands if she did 



Adventures of Louise of Coburg 103 

not mend her ways, — and this in the presence of 
various witnesses. Whereupon the Princess would 
reply contemptuously, "Now you are not talking 
like a doctor but like a spy." 

The only issue out of this hell was to escape, and 
the Princess must have turned many schemes over 
in her head. A certain encouragement was afforded 
by the release of Mattassich-Keglevich, who was 
indeed reduced to a walking skeleton by his seven 
years of severe imprisonment but who had by no 
means lost his love for her. This at least he in- 
formed her secretly. 

So the new drama was prepared outside the in- 
visible walls of the noble mad-house, and it suc- 
ceeded perfectly. 

Mattassich had a kind of friend at Vienna, who 
owned a prosperous, popular eating-house in the 
suburb of Floritzdorf, as well as an extra-powerful 
motor-car. This car was to be the first instrument 
of liberation. 

Dr. Pierson had a sister-in-law who kept a kind 
of pension or small hotel at Bad Elster, a watering- 
place near Koswig on the borders of Bohemia. She 
was immensely fond of money and was clearly in- 
tended to figure as the second instrument. And 



104 Francis Joseph and His Court 

now the intelligent Louise was fully equipped. 

In spite of the strictest orders from Vienna, she 
obtained leave from Dr. Pierson to make an excur- 
sion to Ead Elster, of course under good escort. 
The doctor was naturally glad that his dear sister- 
in-law should have an opportunity of making a bit 
of money out of the Princess. 

Now all was plain sailing. Louise went to Bad 
Elster, and Mattassich arrived there almost at the 
same time on the powerful motor with a small band 
of friends. Dr. Pierson's sister-in-law and the Prin- 
cess' vigilant escort perceived too late that a trap 
had been laid for them. They were either hood- 
winked or overcome by force, and the happy pair, 
now at last reunited, contrived to reach France after 
a regular Odyssey and the use of every conceivable 
precaution. Here they were in safety. 

The consequences of this flight were stupendous, 
as you may well imagine. Philip of Coburg and 
Francis Joseph had terrible outbursts of fury; the 
over-greedy Pierson kicked himself for not having 
been content with his very respectable profits as 
Louise's gaoler; Stephanie and Leopold II. in- 
dulged in sardonic smiles ; there was an unheard-of 
scandal throughout virtuous Germany, where th§ 



Adventures of Louise of Coburg 105 

satirical journals published caricatures without the 
most elementary respect for certain august persons. 
I remember two very impertinent broadsheets that 
were published at the time. One represented Leo- 
pold II., Philip of Coburg and Francis Joseph 
pushing the Princess into the mad-house with great 
violence, and Dr. Pierson standing at the door with 
his warders. In the other was the flight of the 
happy pair on the motor, pursued by the sister-in- 
law with an enormous sword girt to her gown. 

The Princess was then declared by a council of 
the first alienists of France to be perfectly sound 
in mind and body, save for the traces of long and 
cruel ill-treatment. 

Louise and Stephanie eventually succeeded, but 
only partially and after many struggles, in securing 
something out of the inheritance of their father 
Leopold II. 

And Philip of Coburg showed himself as great a 
blackguard at the end as he did all through this 
tragi-comedy, publishing all sorts of books and 
pamphlets, the last eddies of all this storm, which 
derives its chief interest from its connection with the 
complicated tragedy of the House of Hapsburg. 



( 



CHAPTER VI 

ARCHDUKE FRANCIS FERDINAND 
AND HIS BROTHER OTHO 

The story of the succession to the throne of Aus- 
tria is ugly enough and teaches many things, es- 
pecially not to desire it. It would almost appear as 
though there were a curse attached to it. Before 
Charles Francis became heir, three others had to 
disappear in sufficiently evil ways, — Rudolph, Otho 
and Francis Ferdinand. We seem to recognise 
some such diabolical influence as made us open our 
mouths and eyes very wide when we were children. 

We have already followed Rudolph's career, and 
that of Charles Francis is still only an undeveloped 
negative without any indications of the picture it 
will reveal. Let us then pause a moment to con- 
sider the careers of the brothers Francis Ferdinand 
and Otho, whom death cut oflp from the Austro- 
Hungarian throne. 

Everybody knows about Francis Ferdinand's 
tragic end at Serajevo, his extreme devotion to re- 

io6 




Photograph, Underwood & Underwood, N. Y. 

Archduke Francis Ferdinand and His Wife, the 

Countess Sophia Chotek 



Ferdinand and His Brother Otho 107 

ligion, his anti-Italian sentiments, his love-romance. 
All one knows about Otho is that he led a wild life, 
died at an early age from a horrible disease, and 
left a son who is now heir to the throne. 

And yet those two people were remarkable, es- 
pecially when studied in the antagonisms of their 
lives, methods and ideas, for they published some- 
thing very like a second edition of the conflict which 
raged between Francis Joseph and Maximilian. 
An edition, however, without a tragical conclusion, 
for they contrived to agree to lead their own lives 
in their own way. 

I always took a lively interest in their antagonism 
for a variety of reasons, and I had opportunities 
of studying causes, evidence and consequences 
through my relationship and friendship with people 
who enabled me to follow the daily life of the two 
archdukes. Above all, I found a precious source of 
information in my old confessor and teacher, the 

Jesuit Father H A , a famous preacher, a 

man of extraordinary intelligence and culture and 
breadth of views. He was the tutor of Francis 
Ferdinand, whose character was certainly formed 
by this most intelligent and uncompromising Jesuit. 

As for Archduke Otho and the many strange ad- 



io8 Francis Joseph and His Court 

ventures with which he occupied the gossips of 
iVienna, my information came from his faithful aide- 
de-camp, my friend and relative Count Adolphus 
Ledebur Wicheln, an officer and Court chamber- 
lain. Adolphus (eldest son of the late Count Lede- 
bur, Minister of Agriculture and Knight of the 
Golden Fleece) married my cousin Mitza de Resse- 
guier, eldest daughter of the Count Oliver, whom I 
have mentioned in connexion with the sad end of 
Maximilian of Mexico. I also heard a good deal 
about the two Archdukes from one of my brothers, 
Maurice de Resseguier, who is still a secretary at 
the Imperial Court if I am not mistaken. 

A fine tombstone and many wreaths. Archduke 
Rudolph had departed. 

There were no other direct heirs. The throne 
would pass to the Emperor's brother Charles Louis. 
But Charles Louis was very ill and it was not long 
after the tragedy of Meyerling that he too passed 
away to an Empyrean even higher and nobler than 
that of the Austrian Empire, if indeed such a place 
can be conceived. 

Then the curiosity of the world directed itself 
towards his two sons, Francis Ferdinand and Otho. 
But if the Pragmatic Sanction was quite clear on 



Ferdinand and His Brother Otho 109 

the point that the succession appertained to Francis 
Ferdinand as the elder of the two it was equally 
clear that Francis Ferdinand had inherited con- 
sumption from his father and might not have the 
strength to don the very heavy crown of Austria 
and Hungary. 

It was rumoured that he would renounce his 
rights in favour of his brother. And all those who 
strolled along the Karntnerstrasse turned round to 
admire the handsome Archduke Otho, full of health 
and smiles and wine. He was to be seen in the big 
cafes talking very big with a crowd of merry of- 
ficers or following some beauty with his eyes as she 
pursued her rhythmical way towards the alleys of 
the Prater at the fall of day. All watched him with 
sympathy. For Francis Ferdinand was known to 
be oppressed by his illness and his almost senile re- 
ligiosity, while Otho had a violent temper, ran after 
women and made no secret of his vices. People al- 
ways reserve their chief sympathies for naughty 
men. 

But one day Francis Ferdinand returned from 
a long journey round the world completely cured 
and hastened to assert his rights to the succession, 
which could no longer remain in doubt. And Otho 



no Francis Joseph and His Court 

soon buried his disappointment, if disappointment 
there was, in the perfumes of women and the fumes 
of wine. Then he died. And in 1914 Francis Fer- 
dinand also departed on another tremendously long 
journey from which he was never to return. 

Meanwhile, the old Emperor had foreseen the 
possibility of his third heir passing away before 
himself and in 1907 had the foresight to nominate 
a fourth in the person of Otho's son, Charles Fran- 
cis, then twenty years of age. The last perhaps? 
That still remains to be recorded. But if the young 
all die and the old man alone remains, it seems to 
me that Francis Joseph may as well give up think- 
ing about his successors. 

Charles Louis of Hapsburg and Marie Annun- 
ziata of Bourbon had two sons, Francis Ferdinand 
born in 1863 and Otho born in 1865. There was thus 
little difference between their ages, though much 
between their natures. 

Francis Ferdinand began his studies under the 

guidance of the Jesuit Father H A , who 

wrote several books specially intended for the edu- 
cation of the 3^oung Archduke. It was by the in- 
fluence of this Jesuit that he developed a semblance 
of submission while retaining an iron will that was 




O P5 
O 

CJ PS 



as 



Ferdinand and His Brother Otho iii 

always directed towards one object, a strong ten- 
dency towards political intrigue, and an innate dis- 
like for everything anti-Catholic. His belief was 
fervent and he observed all the externals of religion 
very scrupulously from his childhood. He always 
delighted in the soft shadows of chapels, where a 
ray of sunlight crept through Gothic windows, 
scarcely daring to beflower the walls, as though 
afraid to intrude upon the solemnity of the place. 
He loved the odour of incense and roses, for they 
recalled peaceful memories of his first communion 
or the perfumed functions of the month of Mary. 
And with the positive side of his religion there al- 
ways remained a vague mysticism that drove him 
to seek the solitude of woods- and night-time, that 
he might question them about the problems of life ; 
he had a worship also for the realities of nature, 
which he had studied scientifically with great dili- 
gence, as was evidenced by the rich collections of 
plants and minerals which he brought back from his 
journeys. 

We must not forget these early years if we want 
to understand Francis Ferdinand later on, for they 
were the foundation of his private and public life. 

He continued his education in the great Jesuit 



112 Francis Joseph and His Court 

college of Kalksburg, where he was not popular be- 
cause his strict ideas and religious fanaticism con- 
fined his character like an iron cage. He only began 
to attract serious attention when he inherited the 
rich patrimony of his uncle Francis V. of Modena. 

His habits were in accordance with his views, and 
he always preferred an ecclesiastical function to 
good hunting or good company. The delicate 
health, which preceded his journey round the world, 
had left its traces on his looks and vigour. 

"A consumptive with a face like a potato," was 
the verdict of old Prince Cari or Charles of Trautt- 
mannsdorf, the keenest Nimrod in Austria, when 
he came to Nisko in October to slay seventeen stags 
a day from his carriage covered with leafy branches. 

Otho was a very different sort of man, openly 
dictatorial, often quarrelsome, sometimes cruel too. 
The only use of his teachers of science and ethics 
was to provide butts for his wit. Not that he was 
ill-natured, but he had an innate craving for laugh- 
ter and fun; for all the roses of life even though 
public opinion and Holy Church forbade them to 
be plucked. Most of his irreverence was probably 
due to the interminable ceremonies which he had to 
endure in his youth amid the shadows of Gothic 



Ferdinand and His Brother Otho 113 

chapels when he longed to pick up his bruised knees 
from the pavement and run out into the fierce sun- 
light. Anyhow he repaid himself amply after- 
wards for the moral restraints of his youth. 

He had all the strength and grace of a noble race, 
and women went mad over his well turned leg in its 
sheath of white leather so tightly laced that it 
seemed ready to burst; over his very white teeth 
and turned up moustachios, which made him look 
a regular Don Juan. 

It was natural that, with such diiFerent minds, 
the Archdukes should also have different political 
ideals. 

Francis Ferdinand was submissive to his spiritual 
advisers and the ultra- Catholic training of his tu- 
tors. He soon showed himself the uncompromis- 
ing champion of a church policy. A nephew of 
Francis V. of Modena, a grandson of King Bomba 
of Naples, he was opposed to all the liberal ideas 
which have arisen from the ashes of the little Aus- 
trian monarchies in Italy. He would probably have 
revived the question of the Pope's temporal power 
if Fate had given him time to become Emperor. 
For the same reasons he was fiercely opposed to re- 
publican and anti-Catholic France as well as to 



114 Francis Joseph and His Court 

Orthodox Kussia; less openly so to Protestant 
Prussia, the overlord of the Catholic States of Ger- 
many. 

He was a Conservative with a modern veneer. 
He would have liked to consolidate his House on a 
broader but still ultra-Catholic base, maintaining 
and strengthening all the mediaeval traditions, re- 
lying upon an enormous well-disciplined army, con- 
ceding only reforms and innovations of a commer- 
cial character. Thus he offered a splendid example 
of an ancient race adapting itself to new forms in 
order to keep the structure intact. His aspirations 
were essentially antagonistic to the spirit of modern 
times. 

His brother represented the negation of all that ; 
indeed we might call Otho the photographic nega- 
tive of Francis Ferdinand. His political ideas were 
not very clear, for he had always preferred a dis- 
cussion about the genuineness of Countess X's fair 
hair or the comparative merits of the best brands 
of champagne to all social or religious problems. 
But he contrived to display tendencies utterly op- 
posed to those of his brother. Perhaps the differ- 
ences were only on the surface, differences of paths 
that really lead to the same place. For both Arch- 




Photograph, Underwood & Underwood, N. Y. 

Emperor Charles Francis Joseph and Empress Zita op Austria 



Ferdinand and His Brother Otho 115 

dukes aimed at the same goal of absolutism. Both 
had it in their blood, the blood of the Hapsburgs. 

The doubt about the succession to the throne 
made the two brothers appear to be competitors for 
a short time. There was a sort of bloodless con- 
flict, unknown outside Austria but much talked 
about at Vienna and considered likely to have ser- 
ious consequences. Francis Ferdinand was ill and 
gloomy. He invited no friendships or sympathies, 
and he must have been disconcerted to see his 
brother enjoying all the splendour of magnificent 
virility, the devotion of nobles and populace, all of 
whom went into fits of laughter over his most atro- 
cious escapades and forgave him as readily as 
though he were still a schoolboy. 

Nor did Otho spare his pious, taciturn brother 
the constant shafts of a sarcasm that was all the 
more offensive because it was expressed in public. 
He never missed an opportunity of deriding him 
whenever the physical or moral attributes of his 
brother gave him a chance. And when no chance 
offered itself, he went out of his way to find one. 
He took a childish delight in mimicking him, and 
often made him supremely ridiculous. Naughty, 



ii6 Francis Joseph and His Court 

merry Otho ! It was lucky for him that his brother 
did not hold the reins of power. 

The possibility of dangerous consequences did 

not deter him from deriding the Rev. Father H 

A and all Francis Ferdinand's venerable pro- 
fessors. He went ostentatiously to a house of ill 
fame while his brother was at Mass. There were 
also other adventures too shocking for me to relate. 
His most innocent sins were periodical bouts of 
drunkenness celebrated with a certain solemnity of 
ritual. And all this while Francis Ferdinand was 
recovering from his illness, haunting churches and, 
under the guidance of the best advisers, prosecuting 
with silent tenacity certain intrigues towards very 
definite ends. 

It was natural that, after a succession of insults 
and worse than insults, the two Archdukes should 
presently agree to separate. 

Francis Ferdinand selected the Belvidere for his 
abode. It is a magnificent castle, built for Prince 
Eugene of Savoy- Carignan. It overlooks Vienna 
and has shady avenues of sixteenth-century grand- 
eur with thousands of fountains that animate it 
with their crystal murmurs. 

Otho settled much further down in the Augarten 



Ferdinand and His Brother Otho 117 

Palace, as far away as possible from the Belvidere. 
Even the style of the two dwellings was different, 
Otho's being decidedly French. And the gentle- 
men in attendance on the two brothers were either 
open or secret enemies. 

Francis Ferdinand, always gloomy and silent, 
led a very serious life. Otho, lively and indiscreet, 
organised orgies in his castle. There was an in- 
scription over the door: "A pleasure-house where 
all men are always welcomed by their friends." It 
is true that this had been put up by Joseph II. in 
1775. 

But the odd thing is that, in spite of all their 
differences, both had the same aims, both tended 
towards a despotism that was anything but edify- 
ing. While Otho was cruel to his soldiers and 
stripped his unfortunate attendants in order to tie 
them to hot stoves (I have spoken with Anthony 
Kohler, who was tortured in this way), Francis 
Ferdinand would prosecute one of his servants on 
the unproved charge of stealing a sixpenny chain, 
and the magistrate who acquitted the man would 
be removed immediately from his post. 

Both tried to secure the support of the military 
party and were regarded by the Emperor with 



Ii8 Francis Joseph and His Court 

great suspicion on that account; indeed, he tried 
to protect himself by fomenting the discords be- 
tween them. 

For now that his son was dead and there was no 
hope of a direct heir, Francis Joseph thought of 
only one thing — to reign as long as possible. 

In 1886, when he was only twenty-one. Arch- 
duke Otho married Princess Marie Josephine of^ 
Saxony, who was even younger than himself. But 
this did not check him in his tempestuous career. 
It was not his fault, poor fellow. It was that of 
his confounded character, which always inspired 
him with a mad craving for mischief and made him 
give way to every caprice that came into his head. 

He was fond of champagne but did not despise 
other wines. He drank them all in bucketfuls with 
the deliberate intention of making himself drunk. 

This naturally led to a certain amount of un- 
pleasantness. For instance, when he was at the 
Hotel Sacher with a joyous crowd of lively dam- 
sels and noisy officers, he wandered by mistake 
into a room which belonged to the British Ambassa- 
dor and his wife. This would not have mattered 
much in ordinary circumstances. Excuses and a 
hurried exit would have sufficed. But the unfor- 




Photograph, Underwood & Underwood, N. Y. 

Archduchess Maria-Josepha 



Ferdinand and His Brother Otho 119 

tunate fact was that the Archduke was stark naked 
save for a cap on his head and a sword at his side. 
One can imagine that the Ambassadress was not 
particularly pleased. 

He was a good soldier and an excellent horse- 
man, he could handle a sword like one of Dumas' 
musketeers, and he was so proud of his equestrian 
skill that, one day when he met the funeral of a 
worthy burgher on its way to the central cemetery, 
he put his horse at a gallop and leaped over the 
coffin calmly continuing his ride after negotiating 
the obstacle. And oddly enough the mourners did 
not seem to appreciate the cleverness of the feat. 

He would never endure that any one should 
hold opinions different from his own. Once he 
gave a terrible beating in the streets to an honour- 
able member of Parliament who had dared to criti- 
cise his jovial way of living. 

Among the many drunken outbursts of hand- 
some Otho there was one which caused him serious 
troubles. I believe that even he had reason to 
regret it. 

One night at his Castle of Augarten he held high 
revelry with his adjutants and other boon compan- 
ions. The champagne had flowed in torrents and 



120 Francis Joseph and His Court 

if the Archduke was roaring drunk, the legs of his 
courtiers were not very steady either. The usual 
discussion turned to feminine charms when they 
are not concealed by inconvenient veils. And all 
of a sudden the Archduke, staggering to his feet, 
invited the whole party to accompany him to the 
bridal chamber, where his poor wife, Marie Jose- 
phine, was in bed, perhaps making bitter reflections 
over the infidelities and escapades of her merry hus- 
band. 

When they were all in the room, the Archduke 
shouted, "Now you shall see how beautiful my 
wife is." 

Then he tore oiF the bed-clothes and his unfortu- 
nate wife had to take refuge under the bed. One 
of those present has related how the Archduchess' 
Master of Ceremonies, who, like herself, was a 
Saxon, sought, at the risk of his life, to save his 
mistress from this humiliation and then ran off at 
once to telephone to the Emperor. 

Francis Joseph had the blackguard brought to 
the Hofburg that very night, made him go down 
on his knees and gave him a sound flogging. 

But the disgraceful incident had still more ser- 
ious consequences at the Court of Saxony, for all 



Ferdinand and His Brother Otho 121 

the reigning families of Austria and Germany are 
like so many diapasons which all sound if you 
touch one. At Dresden the affair aroused the 
most violent resentment against the Hapsburgs in 
general. It was necessary to find some way of 
avenging this serious offence to a Saxon princess. 
And more than one person was ready to take up 
the cudgels. Especially one of Marie Josephine's 
relations. Princess Mathilda of Saxony, the King's 
sister, who found a scape-goat in Princess Louise 
of Hapsburg- Tuscany, now Mrs. Toselli. 

There is no need to enlarge upon the love-affair 
which suddenly transformed the private life and 
public prospects of the other Archduke, for the 
whole world knows all about it, especially since the 
tragedy of Sarajevo. 

When he came back, completely cured, from his 
journey round the world, received the big legacy 
of Francis V, and was recognised as the heir to the 
Austro-Hungarian throne, Francis Ferdinand be- 
came an excellent match. This fact occurred to his 
aunt Isabella, wife of the Archduke Ferdinand, who 
had six unmarried daughters. So he invited Francis 
Ferdinand, then about thirty-eight years of age, 
to the Castle of Pressburg ostensibly to enjoy the 



122 Francis Joseph and His Court 

shade of magnificent avenues all full of memories 
of Maria Theresa, really to make the acquaintance 
of the eldest of his marriageable cousins, Maria 
Christina, then eighteen. The match would have 
pleased everybody. Francis Ferdinand arrived 
and stayed on for some time, to the great joy of 
his aunt. But one fine day an observant Jesuit 
tutor shattered all her sweet illusions. The Arch- 
duke Francis Ferdinand was only staying on be- 
cause, after a series of conversations in the shady 
avenues of the castle, he had fallen in love with 
one of the Archduchess Isabella's maids of honour, 
the young and beautiful Countess Sophia Chotek. 
Some malicious person was even unjust enough to 
say that he had not stopped at falling in love with 
her. Aunt Isabella was furious and packed the 
imprudent young lady off at once. After seeking 
refuge with a sister, who received her almost like 
a criminal, she retired to a convent at Prague. 

But the wise counsellors of Archduke Francis 
Ferdinand were not caught napping. They re- 
flected that, if they induced the future Emperor to 
marry the Countess Chotek, who was an intelligent 
and pious woman, they would not only have per- 
formed a good action but also acquired, through 




Photograph, Underwood dk Underwood, N. Y. 

Archduke Francis Ferdinand and His Family 



Ferdinand and His Brother Otho 123 

her, a new ascendancy over the Archduke's mind 
and consolidated their influence over the affairs of 
the Dual Monarchy. 

Francis Ferdinand was not difficult to persuade. 
A far tougher nut to crack was Francis Joseph, 
who was always ready to close an eye to illicit loves 
but was quite uncompromising about marriages 
that did not conform to all the rules of custom and 
etiquette. Now Sophia Chotek was the daughter 
of Count Chotek of Chotkowa and Wognin and 
Countess Minzie Kinsky, consequently of ancient, 
impoverished Bohemian nobility but not of the 
blood royal, so she could not share the throne. 

But clerical influences, which had so far carried 
most matters to a successful issue, contrived to win 
this battle also, and Francis Jose'ph consented to 
a morganatic marriage. This was celebrated on 
the 1st of July, 1900, in Bohemia. Previously, 
however, Francis Ferdinand had to sign a deed of 
renunciation to the Crown on behalf of his wife 
and children. 

Soon afterwards, the Archduke's wife was cre- 
ated Princess of Hohemberg by the Emperor, and 
later on Duchess, which in Austria is a much higher 
title. 



124 Francis Joseph and His Court 

This wedding had considerable influence on the 
Archduke, who, with his intelligent wife, placed 
himself at the head of a party of irreconcilables 
who would have liked to see Austria return to the 
times of Metternich. One of the chief objects they 
had in view was to transform Austria into a great 
Slav and Catholic power that would act as a bar- 
rier to Orthodox Russia. 

Otho was the first of the two Archdukes to die. 

He went off to travel in the East, perhaps at 
the suggestion of the Emperor, who was growing 
tired of his disorderly behaviour. After staying 
a long time at Cairo, he came back with a horrible 
disease. But he did not acknowledge himself 
beaten. He went on drinking generous wines and 
courting fresh women and carousing with his 
friends in the Karntnerstrasse. Now, however, 
there were interludes between his pleasures, for he 
had to submit to operations from time to time. The 
last and most painful was that of tracheotomy. 
After that he died, leaving some children and a 
widow who was not inconsolable. That was in 
1906. 

For his brother, the tragic fate of the Hapsburgs 



Ferdinand and His Brother Otho 125 

waited a few years longer. Then it descended upon 
him in 1914. 

And so the two young, vigorous Archdukes 
passed away and the old Emperor lived to bury 
them. 

They were both highly intelligent, they had ar- 
tistic sentiments, originality, presence of mind. In 
the very differences of character, which caused 
antagonisms between them, there was a common 
basis of tenacity and hardness. In their natures were 
collected all the traditions, all the sentiments, all 
the physical and moral qualities of the Imperial 
race. They were two thorough Hapsburgs. 

But that race is a mad and sanguinary anachron- 
ism. 

It was therefore fated that they should disap- 
pear. 



CHAPTER VII 

INTERMEZZO: WILLIAM L AND 
HIS UNSUSPECTED LOVE 

With your permission we will now travel some 
little way back. During the survey of my mem- 
ories, I espied a cross-road which dawdles through 
the fields of sabbatical laziness and will presently 
bring us back to our starting-point. But you will 
notice afterwards that the main road has become 
more easy. 

It was in those days when women hid themselves 
in crinolines, like clappers inside bells, and men 
buried their heads in romantic collars so as to look 
like cocks advancing to the conquest of a farm- 
yard. I must take an oil-lamp to illuminate that 
period, for I am now going back to my grand- 
mother's reminiscences. Quite ancient history. 

I am going to tell you about William I. and take 

you to a Prussian plain where you can almost smell 

Russia ; to a watering place where the Alps stretch 

their chilly feet towards the Danube. 

126 



William I. and His Unsuspected Love 127 

Yes, you say, but what has this to do with Fran- 
cis Joseph? 

Well, in the first place, you know that memory 
is the most treacherous of guides, always delight- 
ing to lead you all over the place like one who does 
not remember where you want to go. 

Then, Francis Joseph, with the face of an OEdi- 
pus continually presented by Fate, makes you too 
melancholy if you have him always by your side, 
and you will breathe all the better in the presence 
of a man who made his own fate. 

Thirdly, enemies count more than friends when 
you want to know the lives of monarchs. Now it 
was William I., the simple king of an upstart king- 
dom, who stood up one fine day to the Emperor of 
the oldest and most powerful Empire, and frowned 
after the manner of a country gentleman who has 
a bit of money and some sturdy fists. "Get out 
of this," he said, "I am the boss here." And when 
the great man would not believe his ears the other 
broke into his house and filled him with the devil's 
own fear. That was the fellow who counted most 
in the political life of Francis Joseph. 

But I am not concerned here with William's ca- 
reer as a conqueror. The history-books tell us all 



128 Francis Joseph and His Court 

about that. I am going to make a few extracts out 
of his private life as my grandmother remembers 
it, with additional details supplied by my mother 
and myself. 

William I. You see at once a massive figure 
hewn out of granite or bronze or any other hard sub- 
stance, all Teutonic roughness, with a half royal, 
half filibuster frown, with his hands pressing on the 
big sword of a mediaeval hero, spreading his legs 
wide apart and roaring in stentorian tones, "No 
thoroughfare here!" 

But now I want you to behold him without crown 
or frown, with the soft eyes of a boyish prince beg- 
ging for a woman's smile. I want you to look 
through the keyhole and see him in his underclothes. 
That is the only revenge available for little people 
like ourselves against great granite conquerors. 

A century ago ! Everything seems very far away 
and very sleepy when we look back from these 
strenuous times with people dying everywhere all 
round us. The Russian snows of Buonaparte's 
retreat seem to us all pink and white and the can- 
nons of the Grand Army were toys for children 
and the soldiers of those days nice kind gentlemen 
who waged war with chivalrous condescension. All 



William I. and His Unsuspected Love 129 

much further away than a mere century now that a 
single year fills so many chapters of history. 

William, son of King Frederick William III. 
of Prussia and Queen Louise, had to spend three 
years of hard exile at Konigsberg, watching the 
French ships cruising about in the marshy recesses 
of the Baltic and straining his ears to hear the 
tramp of French soldiers in the squares of Berlin. 

He hated the French. He was only a boy, born 
in 1797, but France had robbed his father of a 
kingdom and his mother had been outrageously in- 
sulted — his mother, the lovely Louise, whose sweet, 
dignified eyes had not been able to soften the bru- 
tality of Buonaparte. William could not put aside 
a hatred that was bred in his bones, and the hatred 
was still there when his opportunity came in 1870. 
On the other hand he had a feeling of friendliness 
towards Russia. For political necessity, as well as 
a strange afiinity of blood that, deny it who may, 
does persist between Russians and Prussians, di- 
rected his sympathies towards the great plains 
where the sun rises. It may also have been a ques- 
tion of habit. For all those things which filled 
our youth with friendly associations seem to pene- 
trate right into our minds and give us unconscious 



130 Francis Joseph and His Court 

impulses when we meet them again. They are like 
our first love, which is still capable of inflaming our 
cheeks after many years. The Hohenzollern cas- 
tles, in which he spent his childhood, all have an 
exotic air, and their strangeness is all Russian. 
Their halls have dark Siberian beams ; the cornices 
of the great stoves are of malachite, the precious 
marble of the Urals. And the light that trickles in 
from outside finds little to enliven with its gaiety, 
for all the ornaments are of Russian bronze, which 
is almost black, or of tula^ which is of nickel silver, 
that is, black and white. And on all hands there are 
embroideries in Russian colours and kakochnik or 
Russian diadems and jewels of Slavo-Byzantine 
work, — so that if the Russians take some of the cas- 
tles in Eastern Prussia they will find themselves 
almost at home. I remember, in an Imperial castle 
lost among the canals and pines of the Spreewald, 
there was a Christ in burnished silver with great 
big almond eyes made out of blue jewels, seas of 
sweetness in which one might drown oneself when 
the soul is sad. 

But if young William felt the influence of such 
surroundings, it was without dreaming over them, 
for he was by no means a dreamer. He was a fine 



William I. and His Unsuspected Love 131 

little fellow with a practical, healthy mind that 
was quite a stranger to lyrical flights, and most of 
his thoughts were concentrated on the number and 
discipline of soldiers. His abilities were mainly 
scientific, mathematical and military. The life he 
passed with his elder brother was simple and almost 
middle-class. His fond mother wrote thus about 
him to her husband in 1808 with happy pride: 
"Our son William, if I mistake not, will be simple, 
loyal and full of good sense like his father." 

The good and lovely Louise was not far wrong 
in her anticipations. The only thing against him 
in later life was a certain innocent pleasure in visit- 
ing other people's property at the head of his ar- 
mies, and this the lovers of peace and justice have 
found it difficult to forgive him. But who would 
have dreamed of such a career in those distant 
days? He was a slim, sickly-looking youth, a 
younger son with no likely prospect of the throne. 

At an age when his contemporaries fought with 
popguns and wooden swords, young Prince Wil- 
liam was waging real war against Buonaparte. But 
neither his noble martial exercises nor the joy of 
witnessing the Corsican ogre's fall served to restore 
his delicate health. It was decided that he should 



132 Francis Joseph and His Court 

go, like any other mortal, and take a cure at some 
watering-place. 

So here we find him at Franzensbad for several 
consecutive summers. 

It was a fairly well-known health resort even at 
that time, and it seems to have specialised in the 
cure of people who possessed high titles of nobility 
or considerable fortunes. Crowned heads and 
princes of the blood foregathered there. William 
was lodged every year in a small palace, well fur- 
nished according to the taste of the period. It was 
then shared by Princess Fiirstemberg and my 
grandmother Countess Attala Strachwitz, who was 
then comparatively young. 

You may imagine that it was considered a great 
honour for those two noble ladies to entertain the 
future Emperor William I., the "colossal" author 
of the "colossal" greatness of Germany. But no 
one had any idea of what was being hatched in the 
mind of this commonplace Prince, whose shyness 
was painful to see. My grandmother and Princess 
Fiirstemberg scarcely took the faintest notice of 
His Royal Highness; indeed the Princess treated 
him with indiiference almost bordering on con- 
tempt. For you are to remember that Princess 



William I. and His Unsuspected Love 133 

Fiirstemberg, like my grandmother, was an Aus- 
trian, and according to Austrian tradition they re- 
garded young William of Hohenzollern as the des- 
cendant of a little highland family of margraves 
who had rebelled in comparatively recent times 
against the divine and human rights of the glorious 
Empress Maria Theresa. And Maria Theresa had 
dismissed that vain pretentious person, Frederick 
the Great, with a contemptuous smile and a sneer 
about "that little Marquise of Brandenburg." 

Moreover, the young Prince was by no means 
engaging. In spite of his shyness, he wanted to 
make advances to all the splendid young ladies who 
rivalled and even surpassed the flowers of the gar- 
dens of Franzensbad. And he was absurdly awk- 
ward in his courtships. Besides which, he had the 
rather disagreeable habit of taking too much to 
drink, and this often rendered him incapable of 
taking part in the various pastimes of the period. 

All this accounts for his ^being neglected. And 
I should not be surprised if the haughty attitude 
of the Austrian aristocracy had not something to 
do with his attitude towards Austria in 1866. You 
will remember that, after Sadowa, Bismarck had 
to use all his great influence to prevent the revenge- 



134 Francis Joseph and His Court 

ful William from appropriating a slice of that 
blessed Empire. Perhaps, however, William II. 
is now preparing to retrieve his grandfather's lost 
opportunities when the future of his dear ally 
comes up for consideration. 

So Prince William found himself at Franzens- 
bad in an atmosphere of superficial deference and 
latent hostility. 

Princess Fiirstemberg was particularly disagree- 
able. She was a mediatised princess in rather poor 
circumstances and she did not lay the blame on the 
real culprit, Buonaparte, but upon Prussia for not 
having stopped him. 

She was full of gall towards the young Prince 
and neglected no opportunity of making him feel 
her resentments. And William's strange habits af- 
forded her plenty of opportunities. 

The mischievous young people of Franzensbad 
took a special interest in the famous tight breeches 
of white doeskin which the Prince of Prussia de- 
lighted to display. There was a rumour (perhaps 
started by Princess Fiirstemberg) that he used to 
wet them before he put them on so that they clung 
to his legs when they had been dried by the heat 
of his body. And a still more complicated opera- 



William I. and His Unsuspected Love 135 

tion was required to put them on. At least four 
servants had to be called in to help. Two of them 
held the breeches out at full stretch, and two more 
guided his half -naked Highness into the terrible 
sheath, pushing and pressing him and making him 
slide in with gentle insistence. 

It was this operation which Princess Fiirstem- 
berg utilised for the gratification of her perverse 
inclinations, laying two snares really unworthy of 
a noble lady like herself. 

In the first place, as the Prince had only brought 
two servants with him, he was obliged to ask for 
the help of two others when he wanted to put on 
his unspeakable breeches for a grand occasion. 
The Princess agreed to lend two of her servants, 
but at the most inopportune moment her old fac- 
totum, Anthony Kerpic, would come in and call 
them off. They left the Prince at once, for those 
were their secret orders. The consequences were 
terrible and inevitable. Sometimes the breeches 
burst and the Prince was sent sprawling on the 
floor, and he often missed some tender appoint- 
ment. 

The other trick outran all the limits of decency 
and my grandmother, who was perhaps an accom- 



136 Francis Joseph and His Court 

plice, took a huge delight in relating it. For my 
part I can scarcely think of it without blushing. 
For one day a band of noble damsels, led by the 
very impertinent Princess of Rohan, secretly at- 
tended one of these scenes. Not, mind you, to re- 
main like mice behind the screen, but to run away 
with shouts of laughter after having bombarded 
the young Prince with big apples stolen from my 
grandmother's garden. And the worst of it was 
that at that moment William had not yet succeeded 
in putting on his white breeches. Fancy if his sol- 
diers could have seen him in that predicament when 
they were dying for him under the walls of Paris! 

But old Anthony Kerpic, who was deeply de- 
voted to his mistress, proved a regular mine of 
petty spitefulness during His Royal Highness's 
visits to Franzensbad. He succeeded, for instance, 
in keeping the Prince out of the house half the 
night more than once when His Royal Highness 
had gone to a private ball and forgotten to take 
his key. It was perhaps lucky that William only 
ascended the throne many years later, when Kerpic 
"was already dead. He would certainly have re- 
membered all the disrespect of the old servant. 

AH the same, the Prince was fairly friendly on 



William I. and His Unsuspected Love 137 

the whole. During the days before the ruin of my 
family, I often had in my hands some of the pres- 
ents which the Prince gave to my grandmother. 
One of these was a beautifully carved cedar-wood 
box lined with ebony, with a golden key, and it con- 
tained a dozen pairs of white Suede gloves with the 
regulation seventeen buttons, and another, a beau- 
tiful big fan of ebony and black satin, on which a 
clever artist had painted white roses. 

William was a man who always subordinated 
everything to reasons of State, even his heart. He 
had cherished a real passion for Princess Eliza 
Radzwill, but in order not to trouble plans for the 
succession of the dynasty, he married Princess 
Augusta of Saxe- Weimar in 1829. 

This Princess, afterwards Queen and finally Em- 
press, was married for political reasons and occu- 
pied a very small place in the heart of her husband. 
He always treated her with great deference, but 
soon directed his amorous expansions towards other 
women. 

And the Empress Augusta was terribly jealous. 
She wearied him continuously with recriminations 
and only succeeded in drowning her conjugal 
griefs in a course of naughty French novels. Her 



138 Francis Joseph and His Court 

attitude embittered William and he used to tell his 
confidants, Count Perponcher and old von Seeken- 
dorf, for instance, that he would have preferred a 
plot against his life to the jealousy of his wife. 
The plot against his life came all in due time when 
he was old. But his wife never ceased to be jealous. 

Here is an instance. One of Augusta's ladies- 
in-waiting. Countess Huberta of Strachwitz, was 
a sister of my mother. She was not beautiful but 
had a splendid head of copper-coloured hair. Au- 
gusta was very jealous of her, no one knows why. 
One day William kissed the Countess's hand as 
usual, but seems to have kissed it rather too far up, 
where the Suede glove finished and my aunt's skin 
began. This trifling incident happened to be 
noticed by a malicious lady, Frau von Weiling, who 
hastened to report it to Augusta. Great wrath 
ensued, and my aunt, who may or may not have 
been a bad lot, had to retire to the Castle of Kam- 
minietz in Prussian Silesia, and thence to Leopoli 
as Abbess of the Convent of the Sacred Heart. 
She was still there in 1914 when Leopoli was taken 
by the Russians. 

And Augusta sometimes interfered in politics, 
causing infinite trouble to the Government. For 



William I. and His Unsuspected Love 139 

that reason Bismarck hated her. Before discussing 
State affairs with the Sovereign, he would often 
give way to vehement anger and make bitter com- 
plaints against the interference of Augusta. Wil- 
liam used to listen to all the Chancellor's impreca- 
tions against Her Majesty and then open the real 
conversation every time with the same words: 

"My dear Bismarck, let us assume that you have 
not said a single word of what has just passed your 
lips. Let us further assume that I have not heard 
a single word of what you intended me to hear. 
ISlow we will talk politics." 

I had this from the wife of Puttkamer, Bis- 
marck's cousin, sometime Minister of Public Wor- 
ship in Prussia. 

It was very wrong of the Empress Augusta to 
mix herself up with politics. As for her jealous 
furies, she had some small excuse. I have myself 
had an opportunity of verifying one of the worst of 
William's conjugal infidelities. It never became 
notorious, though it possessed an extraordinary in- 
terest at the time. Anyhow, there was no tragedy 
attached to it. 

In the years 1890 and 1891, that is after the fi- 
nancial ruin of my unfortunate family, I went with 



140 Francis Joseph and His Court 

my mother and my brother Bernard (the youngest, 
now in Australia) to Baden-Baden, one of the most 
aristocratic watering-places in Europe. We were 
boarders in the house of Frau Faber-Augsberger, 
who owned many other boarding-houses in various 
parts of Baden-Baden. Now, gentle readers, this 
Mrs. Faber happened to be a natural daughter of 
William I. and of . . . Joan of Arc. I will tell 
you how. 

His brother Frederick William IV., who as- 
cended the throne of Prussia in 1840, had no chil- 
dren, so William was heir presumptive to the 
throne. He busied himself a good deal with politics, 
and still more with military matters. But that did 
not prevent him from indulging in occasional ex- 
ercises of the heart, which, with a wife like Augusta, 
would otherwise have degenerated into a hard, cold 
bit of gristle. During one of his visits to the Thea- 
tre Royal at Berlin, he chanced to admire Frau 
Augsberger, a beautiful actress, who was chiefly 
celebrated for her rendering of the part of Joan 
of Arc, or as German Kultur translates her, the 
Jungfrau von Orleans. 

The actress wore a wonderful suit of black ar- 
mour and was moreover as tall and strong as a 



William I. and His Unsuspected Love 141 

royal grenadier, consequently in full accord with 
the heavy, massive taste of the period. And Wil- 
liam did more than admire. He fell in love. Joan 
of Arc, a French heroine, seemed fair game for 
Teutonic strength, a fortress still more worth at- 
tacking than those which he took in 1870. So he 
loved the actress and they had a child, — the daugh- 
ter of Joan of Arc. 

So far, so commonplace. And as Frau Augs- 
berger was very proud and earned a great deal by 
her art, she refused all offers of help from the 
Court of Berlin. She retired from the stage, lived 
peacefully and honestly for a long time with her 
child, then became very ill and died. 

The little Augsberger was left without a mother 
and without means. Or if there were any means, 
they were all absorbed by a sort of distant cousin 
who passed as her guardian and does not seem to 
have been disinterested. He recognised her talent 
and her inherited tendencies for the stage and ar- 
ranged for her to follow her mother's career. At 
that time she knew nothing of her left-handed royal 
origin. 

She was handsome and soon went far. Then a 
strange thing happened. 



142 Francis Joseph and His Court 

She was playing at one of the great Berlin thea- 
tres, when William I., King of Prussia, chanced to 
attend a performance one evening. He was now 
well past sixty, but as tough and strong as any of 
the bronze or marble monuments which have since 
been raised in his honour throughout the public 
squares of Germany. 

Between the cares of a war with Denmark and 
another with Austria, he had come to seek a little 
relaxation at a theatre. He noticed the young 
actress. Her face was familiar; it seemed a face 
he had known long ago, but a face that had not 
changed, while he had grown considerably older. 
Like many things we see after many years, it made 
him feel sad, for it seemed to say, "You go on 
your way and I remain always the same." His 
memory supplied the girl with a helmet, a sword 
and a black shield. There in front of him stood 
the ghost of his incomparable Jungfrau von Or- 
leans. 

So it came to pass that one horrid evening, a 
young actress and an old Sovereign sat eating and 
drinking together in a private room. It was a hot 
July, the perfume of the Thiergarten trees came 
in at the open windows, and the air seemed laden 




Photograph, Underwood & Underwood, N. Y. 

William I., King of Prussia 



William I. and His Unsuspected Love 143 

with kisses. The confidences became more intimate 
and the old Sovereign delved into the recesses of 
his memory. He told her how she reminded him of 
an actress called Augsberger whom he had known 
long ago when she played Joan of Arc. To cut a 
long story short, the old Sovereign and the young 
actress discovered they were father and daughter. 
It was perhaps lucky that the discovery occurred 
in time. 

Some years later she married a man called Faber, 
who soon ate up the handsome dowry which had 
descended upon her from heaven or rather from 
the royal Castle of Berlin; which is much the same 
thing. Then he ate up, one by one, the very sub- 
stantial subsidies which arrived periodically from 
the capital. But he died at last, perhaps of in- 
digestion after having eaten so much. Very little 
money was now left; no more came down from 
heaven, for the deity who used to send it was dead 
and his ministers had no intention of continuing to 
pay. 

So the widow Faber, daughter of an Emperor 
and Joan of Arc, became a boarding-house keeper 
and let villas. 

During the years 1890 and 1891, when I was at 



144 Francis Joseph and His Court 

Baden-Baden with my mother and brother, I had 
in my hands a big packet of letters personally writ- 
ten by Prince Bismarck, Chancellor of the Ger- 
man Empire, to Mrs. Faber. 

The letters, at least fifty of them, covering a 
period of about fifteen years, all resolved them- 
selves more or less into three arguments: (1) that 
Mrs. Faber must on no account come to Berlin to 
ask for more money, but must wait for it at Baden; 

(2) that she must not spend on "that wretched Ba- 
varian, Faber" all the money sent from Berlin, 
£2,000 a year, the annuity of a dowager duchess; 

(3) that she must be satisfied with the sum as- 
signed to her because she would not receive a 'pfen- 
nig more. 

With Mrs. Faber, as with everybody else, the 
great Bismarck was very rude. And from the cor- 
respondence we can deduce many things: that the 
daughter of Joan of Arc, after the revelation of 
her birth, had known how to derive the utmost 
profit out of it ; that Mrs. Faber, like the Empress 
Augusta, waged war against the iron Chancellor 
and, wonder of wonders, more successfully than the 
French in 1870; that, from time to time, armed as 
she was with a possible scandal, she threatened to 



William I. and His Unsuspected Love 145 

march on Berlin and invest the capital; that, in 
spite of Bismarck's injunctions, she continued to 
spend money on the "miserable Bavarian," her 
husband; and, in fine, that she was never content 
with the money she received. 

And in spite of the granite hardness of the Chan- 
cellor, he had to confess himself beaten more than 
once by gentle Mrs. Faber. I remember at least 
two letters, in which the Chancellor found time, 
between an international treaty and a treaty of 
peace, to ask the ex-actress for a receipt for fairly 
big sums that had been sent her from Berlin in 
addition to her appanage. 

The letters were on large sheets of white paper, 
covered with Bismarck's huge handwriting, the 
handwriting of a conqueror. The last letters were 
after William I.'s death, when Bismarck had lost 
much of his influence or else thought it unnecessary 
to use it on behalf of Mrs. Faber. 

The which explains why the unhappy lady was 
reduced to letting lodgings and why she opened her 
sad heart to sympathetic lodgers. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE THREE AUSTRO-BELGIAN PRIN- 
CESSES: 
CHARLOTTE, STEPHANIE, LOUISE 

Bella gej'ant alii; tu, felioo Austria, nube: Nam 
quae Mars aliis, dat tihi regna Venus. 

To-DAY perhaps the Court poet of the fifteenth 
century would not have had the courage to com- 
pose such a distych. So much irony seems to be 
hidden away therein. But perhaps you don't un- 
derstand Latin? So much the better. If you make 
a wild guess at the meaning, you are much more 
likely to get at the truth. So I am not going to 
give you a translation. 

The bridal chambers are very handsome at the 

Hofburg. And though the beds are draped in 

damask and velvet, and have baldaquins and 

crowns, they lose themselves in all the magnificence. 

As bedrooms they are much too big. But what 

does that matter to royal Princesses and imperial 

Archdukes for a single night? Walls near or walls 

146 



The Three Austro-Belgian Princesses 147 

far away, a plastered ceiling or a starlit sky — all 
seems well on love's first night. Perhaps not to 
the men of a virtuous and Catholic House like that 
of the Plapsburgs. But the baby princesses who 
come from afar oif, still sad with memories of 
some remote castle, trembling on the threshold of 
a new life : no room can be too big for their great 
nuptial dreams. 

Afterwards, the sad days come. So the Imperial 
Castle of Vienna lies in wait for its brides. When 
I pass through the rooms, I see the velvet bed, the 
stucco ceiling, the cold, severe walls. And in a 
corner there is a little heap of ashes, all that re- 
mains of the dreams of the princesses. Poor prin- 
cesses ! What did anything matter in their happy 
hours? Still less matters in their hours of woe. 
They thought through their sleepless nights (these 
Charlottes and Stephanies and Louises and Elisa- 
beths and all the rest of them) that they were filling 
the rooms with the drama of their lives. But the 
rooms of the Hofburg, after restraining the hearts 
of its brides with hands of gold and marble, after 
seeing them die or depart, are still empty and cold. 

Only one of them saved her dream of love, saved 
it through death and madness : Charlotte. 



148 Francis Joseph and His Court 

THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE HAPSBURGS IN THE 
DRAMA OF THE THREE PRINCESSES 

Three princesses of the same family left the busy- 
plains of Belgium, came under the shadow of that 
dark sky where the two-headed eagle flaps its wings, 
and all found unhappiness. Charlotte, the sister 
of Leopold II. and his two eldest daughters, 
Louise and Stephanie. 

I have already told you about them. You have 
followed the course of their three dramas: one in 
the tragic solitude of death and madness, another 
in a comedy that is full of tears, then that of Ste- 
phanie and the catastrophe of Meyerling. And all 
the three heroines survived their tragedies. That 
is why the dramas of real life are so much sadder 
than those on the stage. There at least the curtain 
falls, the mummers change their clothes and go out 
to eat and drink, and you can possess your souls in 
peace. In real life, however, the curtain falls and 
the public thinks no more about it, but there always 
remains somebody to suffer. I will tell you what 
happened afterwards to the three Austro-Belgian 
princesses. But my main object is that, when you 
compare their painful lives, you should realise the 



The Three Austro-Belgian Princesses 149 

responsibility of the House of Hapsburg in their 
misfortunes. That is only just, for the Hapsburgs 
have tried to lay the blame upon them when their 
only fault was that they did not know in time how 
to protect themselves. Some gentle politicians 
imagine that they can suppress a man for reasons 
of State. But it is always infamous to torment 
women who have come to you in ignorance, per- 
haps even in love. 

You say that Charlotte went mad through grief 
over the death of her husband, and that her grief 
was all the greater because he was her only love. 
But those who know the uncompromising spirit and 
cruel pride of the Austrian aristocracy, only those 
who know the whole extent of the persecution di- 
rected by the Emperor and his partisans against 
those who remained faithful to his brother, can 
understand how the madness of the Empress Char- 
lotte had other causes besides the terrible Mexican 
adventure. It was the last desperate effort of na- 
ture to save a body and soul from destruction. 

The blows had been dealt her incessantly, con- 
tinuously, of a set purpose. And madness is the 
best medicine for grief. 

Louise and Stephanie were two women neither 



150 Francis Joseph and His Court 

better nor worse than many others, just as good or 
bad as life made them. They found their hearts' 
sickness in matrimony. The blame for their mis- 
takes belongs to the imperial and royal Archdukes, 
their husbands. And their new family never 
showed them a spark of affection or pity. The 
gilded doors of their apartments were open at the 
Hofburg, but between them and their nearest re- 
lations the doors were always closed. There were 
financial intrigues, too, and insidious calumnies. 
They rebelled, it is true, but their hearts were de- 
stroyed. 

I admit that their father had his share in their 
misfortune. But if he was indifferent to their 
woes and even pushed them down the sad slope, it 
was largely through excess of sentiment. Let me 
explain. He had a tender love for all women who 
did not happen to be his daughters; he was ever 
ready to hearken to their prayers. And in a case 
of two against a hundred, it is the hundred who 
win. Moreover, it was the Court of Vienna which 
had known how to direct the affairs of the heart 
of the most gallant King of the Belgians. Surely, 
kings are not to blame when their affairs of the 
heart are also affairs of State. 



The Three Austro-Belgian Princesses 151 

CHARLOTTE AND THE CAR OF HAPPINESS 

Princess Charlotte of Belgium in 1857 was like 
a face that has faded away in a very old photograph 
when you chance to open the family album. Such 
faces, when you look at them with half-closed eyes, 
afford strange, sad desires, a home-sickness for 
times in which you could not live because you were 
not yet born. 

Charlotte still lives, but I cannot really believe 
that she can be yet alive, for the death of her mind 
has taken her very far away from us. I seem to 
hear some one reading verses out of some romantic 
ballad about a girl of fifty years ago, seated at a 
window and mourning over the departing day — ■ 
the sort of things that made our grandparents 
weep. Poor Princess Charlotte! 

She was born in 1840 and was married one July 
day when she was seventeen, a virgin even in her 
thoughts and dreams. And her Maximilian was 
indeed the ideal fair Prince. 

There were high festivals at Brussels. The danc- 
ing and singing and feasting lasted for three whole 
days, as in a fairy-tale at the marriage of a king's 
daughter. At night there were Venetian illumina- 



152 Francis Joseph and His Court 

tions on the Canal of Wiliebroeck. When I was 
a boy, I used to stand in front of Charlotte's big 
portrait in one of the rooms of our palace. Then 
I recalled her story and her madness, but more 
particularly those Venetian illuminations which a 
great Belgian lady, one of my mother's friends used 
to describe to me to keep me quiet. "It was a hot 
July night. The air was damp and heavy with 
the scent of hay. The whole canal seemed on fire, 
such was the throng of boats all blazing with magic 
lights; and they went slowly, slowly down the 
stream, bearing with them the joyous cries of 
merry-makers and the blare of military bands. At 
the end of the procession, greatest and brightest of 
all, was a boat called the Car of Happiness : 'Hap- 
piness' was inscribed aloft, among wreaths of roses 
and orchids, above the portraits of the bride and 
bridegroom, Maximilian and Charlotte. The car 
seemed to put the night to flight with its big blaze. 
At last it passed away and on the waters of the 
canal there remained nothing but darkness and the 
sadness of distant drums. The happiness of the 
happy pair had passed away so far as that day was 
concerned. Things happened like that in life, too, 
my boy." 



The Three Austro-Belgian Princesses 153 

The old lady with her story of the Car of Hap- 
piness, my mother with her account of Maximil- 
ian's death, Charlotte's sad Odyssey among the 
Courts of Europe before he died, the first years 
of her madness, — all these have filled my heart 
with sorrow. 

THE SAD STORY OF A DOLL 

Charlotte was twenty-seven when she went mad. 
Her brother, Leopold II., shut her up in the Castle 
of Tervueren, a fairly cheerful place in fine weather 
when the birds sing, but gloomy enough when you 
hear the snow fall, flake on flake, in the silence of 
winter. One of her servants has described the 
life of the ex-Empress during the madness, which 
served her as a depository wherein to hide her one 
great love. She used to pass her nights at a win- 
dow, with her still beautiful eyes staring out into 
the darkness, talking and laughing and weeping 
over things that she alone could see. During the 
daytime she remained in her big, strange room, 
where you could make out the oddest collection of 
things among the shadows. A bridal dress was 
hung on the wall beneath a feathered Mexican idol 



154 Francis Joseph and His Court 

and a bunch of old flowers and various weapons. 
In a corner was a life-sized doll representing a man 
in imperial robes, with the fair face of a child and 
blue eyes and a flowing blond beard — her dead hus- 
band, Maximilian. She used to spend her days 
talking dreamily to the doll, as though it were alive, 
transporting herself far away from the stern real- 
ities, as only lunatics and poets can. Then one 
evening as the shadows deepened and she still had 
words of love to say, she carried the doll to the 
window. It was growing too dark, so she brought 
a candle near. The heavy curtains caught fire and 
she was carried from the room in flames with her 
doll in her arms, severely burned. That at least is 
the story and we know that there was a fire at the 
Castle of Tervueren in 1874. 

Thence Charlotte went to live at the Castle of 
Bouchout. A wall of thick trees and her madness 
separate her from the world, which has remained 
for her as it was before 1870, and she still dreams 
of love though she is now more than 75. I wonder 
what her thoughts were in that terrible August of 
1914, when her solitude was disturbed by German 
guns and the iron tramp of troops. 

The Court of Vienna viewed the Empress Char- 



The Three Austro-Belgian Princesses 155 

lotte's madness with no regrets, for it had many 
grievances against her. It objected to her as a 
Princess of Belgium, for Belgium was regarded al- 
most as a rebel province that had separated itself 
from the sacred crown of the Hapsburgs. And, di- 
rectly or indirectly, she had favoured the Liberal 
tendencies of her husband. So for him death and 
for her madness. God always protects the Haps- 
burgs. 

STEPHANIE^S MARRIAGE AND ITS POLITICAL REASONS 

It was said to have been a love-match. But cour- 
tiers who spoke with Rudolph soon after his return 
from making Stephanie's acquaintance at Brus- 
sels have given me his impressions, which were any- 
thing but flattering to her. 

Indeed, he made no secret about the matter. His 
terrible father had desired him to marry her and 
he did marry her. From his sceptical point of 
view, matrimony was of no great importance. 

As for the reasons which impelled Francis Jos- 
eph to want a Belgian princess as a daughter-in- 
law after having driven a Belgian sister-in-law into 
a madhouse, it is not difficult to unravel them when 



156 Francis Joseph and His Court 

we consider the political situation of Austria at the 
time of the marriage. Having been shut out by- 
Bismarck from all part or lot in the German Con- 
federation, driven back towards the Balkans in the 
East, and confronted with new and formidable 
problems, Austria wanted to retain a certain in- 
fluence in Western Europe at all costs. She had 
controlled Hanover for a long time, but Bismarck 
had put an end to that, and the whole period of 
renunciation had been very painful. So Francis 
Joseph recalled the phrase, "Tu, felix Austria, 
nube." A good marriage would enable him to 
stretch a long arm right away to the other side of 
Germany, and the Belgian dynasty would accept 
the match in spite of the martyrdom of its other 
Princess, for it then regarded Prussia as its most 
terrible enemy. 

So Kudolph and Stephanie were married in May 
1881, and another idyll was prepared by the Boyal 
Houses of Austria and Belgium, though they al- 
ready had plenty of sentimental reasons to look 
askance at one another. And ail might have pro- 
ceeded as happily as the proverbial marriage bells, 
if it had not been for Rudolph, who was a bad 
politician, however thorough a lover he might be. 



The Three Austro-Belgian Princesses 157 

LEOPOLD II. AND FRANCIS JOSEPH 

Many thought that the oiFer of the Hapsburg 
crown to a Belgian princess was intended as a sort 
of compensation for the shocking fate that had 
overtaken Princess Charlotte. But King Leopold 
was an old fox and not to be trapped so easily. He 
consented to give away his daughter, the victim's 
niece, to the son of the executioner ; but he retained 
his suspicions of the family with which he was now 
allying himself a second time by closer bonds. 
For he held Francis Joseph and his entourage per- 
sonally responsible for Charlotte's madness. And 
neither in the streets when he drove with the Em- 
peror and Empress, nor at the state banquet, nor 
at the gala performance when all eyes were turned 
to the royal box, did he conceal his extraordinary 
coldness. This has been told to my mother by many 
Court personages who were close to Leopold dur- 
ing the celebration of Stephanie's betrothal. 

I have also heard how uncomfortable everybody 
was at the state banquet. Francis Joseph ate 
silently and very fast, as though he were being 
chased by wild Tartars. Elisabeth was disdainful 
and very pale. When Leopold spoke to her in 



158 Francis Joseph and His Court 

common politeness, she turned her head the other 
way. She said afterwards that she had no desire 
to converse with "the commercial king." 

As Leopold understood perfectly well what share 
the Hapsburgs had in the misfortunes of his sis- 
ter and daughters, his attitude towards his daugh- 
ters is all the more strange. Francis Joseph might 
have forgiven them for shaking off the yoke. Leo- 
pold, their father, never forgave them. 

HOW STEPHANIE CAME TO MARRY LONYAY 

Stephanie was not a light or ambitious woman, 
as some have represented her to be. 

She was merely a jealous woman. 

She screamed, she cursed, she broke the furni- 
ture, she scandalised the haughty Hapsburg an- 
cestors who frowned down at her from their dusty 
frames. Rudolph liked her well enough in his way. 
But between dissolute intelligence and honest me- 
diocrity there is such a great gulf iixed that it can 
never be bridged by two people who have to live 
together all their lives. Every attempt to bring 
the edges nearer together only reveals the depth 
of the abyss. 

After the tragedy of Meyerling, Stephanie en- 



The Three Austro-Belgian Princesses 159 

countered the same old hostile indifference at Court. 
The Empress had wrapped herself up in her grief 
and wandered about the world like a lost soul. Per- 
haps the Emperor was the only one to show Ste- 
phanie any sort of regard. But he was by no means 
demonstrative and he certainly did not make up 
to her for the disappointments of her first mar- 
riage. 

Her long struggle with Francis Joseph to ob- 
tain his consent to her marriage with Count Lon- 
yay is common property, but the way in which that 
consent was extorted is known to few. I heard 
about it from the Countess of Bergen, who had 
been lady-in-waiting to Stephanie. It was she who 
first introduced my mother to the Archduchess. 

After the tragedy of Meyerling, Stephanie spent 
many years in her Castle of Luxemburg, some nine 
miles out of Vienna, living there very quietly with 
her daughter Elisabeth. Then one fine day she 
returned to the world and informed the Emperor 
with unwonted firmness that she wished to marry 
Count Lonyay, a rich if not very noble chamber- 
lain of her household. They had been in love for 
some time. 

The Emperor was inflexible. The Archduchess 



i6o Francis Joseph and His Court 

fell ill of a mysterious illness that lasted nine months 
and necessitated a mysterious operation. It was 
performed by Dr. Oser assisted by Dr. Kerzel, and 
the only people present were the old Emperor and 
the Archduchess Maria Theresa, widow of his fa- 
vourite brother Charles Louis. 

The operation succeeded. But when Stephanie 
recovered, she seemed like a living corpse. Her 
characteristic face was so much changed that, when 
she took her afternoon drives in the Prater, the 
good people of Vienna did not bow to her for they 
simply did not recognize her. 

So the Emperor was induced to bow to an ac- 
complished fact and permit the marriage of the 
Archduchess to Count Lonyay of Nagy-Lonya. 

The wedding took place on the 22nd of March 
1900 at the Castle of Miramar, lent by the Em- 
peror for the honeymoon. It was too late to think 
of orange-blossoms, but Stephanie wanted some 
flowers to bring her luck in her new life. She asked 
for a wreath of roses. But roses do not grow at 
Miramar, where the garden is too much exposed 
to the wind. So the roses were procured from 
Trieste. 

Thus it came to pass that Miramar, which had 



The Three Austro-Belgian Princesses i6i 

witnessed the departure of Maximilian and Char- 
lotte for Mexico, now welcomed a very different 
couple, reopening windows that had remained 
closed for many years, windows like eyes that re- 
tained the same old expression of dreamy indiffer- 
ence. 

There is a certain justice in events, as the old 
Emperor must have realised when he returned to 
visit Miramar. For that same castle that had wit- 
nessed his offer of Mexico's crown of thorns to his 
good brother, now saw him crown his son's widow 
with a wreath of roses, extorted from him by the 
force of facts. 

TO-DAY 

There is a certain justice in events. 

As for Louise, I need not mention her again 
after her romantic flight from Bad Elster. She 
has lived in Paris with her Lieutenant Mattassich 
in a house surrounded by trees and flowers, asking 
only to be left in peace. Let us too leave her in 
peace. 

Since the war, Stephanie has become one of the 
Red Cross Ladies in Austria. Let us hope that 
the two sisters may find in their Lonyay and Mat- 



i62 Francis Joseph and His Court 

tassich some consolation for all they have suffered 
through their connexion with the Hapsburgs, or 
at least the comfort of oblivion, which has been 
vouchsafed to their unfortunate Aunt Charlotte. 

To sum up. The recent relations of Austria and 
Belgium, which Austrian circles refer back to the 
period of the Congress of Vienna ; the unhappy his- 
tory of the three Belgian princesses; the inter- 
ference of the Austrian Court with the private life 
of Leopold II.; the attitude of the present Queen 
of the Belgians, who is a Bavarian Princess and 
doubtless shudders when she recalls the treatment 
meted out by the Hofburg to the Empress Elisa- 
beth, another Bavarian Princess: all these afford 
at least a partial explanation of the behaviour of 
the two Central Empires towards Belgium. 

Many dynastic and psychological influences com- 
bined to form a hostile current between the two 
States. 

And it seems to me that a certain visit of Austro- 
German aeroplanes, as insistent as a flight of gnats, 
over the royal Palace at Antwerp, with designs on 
the life of the royal family, had its origin in these 
old stories. 

Will other Belgian Princesses spend their first 



The Three Austro-Belgian Princesses 163 

nights of love on the couches of the Hofburg? Will 
there be other little heaps of ashes in the dark cor- 
ners of the rooms to commemorate their bridal 
dreams ? 

Human events are so strange and politics move 
in such a mysterious way that I do not venture to 
say Yes or No. 



CHAPTER IX 
FRANCIS JOSEPH, PATERFAMILIAS 

I AM not going to judge Francis Joseph. It is 
useless to analyse a man who never said anything. 
He did this and that. Very well. But that 
does not give us an insight into his heart, least of 
all when we are dealing with a sovereign. 

Still, when we behold so many sad events and 
one man affected by them all, we begin to wonder 
whether he was above or at the back of all the pain 
with which he was chastised. He was a strange being 
and we want to search his soul with inquisitive eyes. 

Then we are moved to great melancholy. A 
whole block of houses has fallen, save one ; and that 
one, standing alone, makes us sadder than all those 
which have fallen. In a field of stubble you may 
see one bent ear that has not been cut because the 
scythe refused to touch it. 

I have surveyed his life all through. After re- 
lating stories old and new, I wanted to find a con- 
necting link between them and the Emperor as he 

164 



Francis Joseph, Paterfamilias 165 

really was. But the man hid himself so thor- 
oughly in the sovereign that no verdict is possible. 
When a man feels that he is the State and that the 
State is only another name for himself, he is bound 
to bolt and bar all doors on his feelings, however 
deep they may happen to be. Imagination alone 
can open those doors, not historical truth. But 
imagination may help us sometimes. 

Francis Joseph was born at the Castle of Schon- 
brunn on the 18th of August, 1830. His parents 
were the Archduke Francis Charles and the Arch- 
duchess Sophia. 

Schonbrunn in 1830. I can see the park on a 
moonlight night, shrubberies shrouded in shadows, 
labyrinths of pergolas, the distant castle suggesting 
fairy-tales, muffled music from who knows where, 
a halo of silver and cotton- wool over every project- 
ing shape, and two people walking along the al- 
leys, heeding none of these things. Theysare kiss- 
ing each other. Did you see them by the light of 
that ray through the foliage? They are the Duke 
of Beichstadt, Napoleon's son, and the Archduchess 
Sophia . . . No, no, that must have been a bad 
joke played by the moon. 

Some people have detected a likeness between 



i66 Francis Joseph and His Court 

the portrait of the Aiglon and that of young Fran- 
cis Joseph. Look for yourselves. I know nothing 
about it. 

During his early years, as everybody knows, 
Francis Joseph was proud and violent, anything 
but a gentle soul. His own inclinations and his 
mother's whims made him utterly self-centred; he 
had no consideration even for her. She devoted all 
her efforts to his external development, for was he 
not the future ruler? She never taught him to show 
gratitude for kind words or for those lessons which 
hurt at first and then appear blessings on reflection. 
He was the future Emperor. So she cultivated his 
bad inclinations, as though she liked to watch the 
growth of poisonous flowers. He became haughty 
and sensuous, though he studied languages and his- 
tory, took an interest in the army and went se- 
renely to Church. It was an unhealthy education, 
with tiresome restrictions and undue liberty. 

Thus Francis Joseph passed from the tedium of 
close studies to the discipline of barracks, to the 
perfume of incense and the sharp satisfaction of 
unhealthy desires. At eighteen he became Em- 
peror. 

He too had his idyll. It was at just the right age. 



Francis Joseph, Paterfamilias 167 

— twenty-three. He would have been incapable of 
it either before or after. It was like the growth of 
a violet that adapts itself ill to an Imperial garden 
full of fleshly flowers. So it faded quickly and 
never bloomed again. It did not bloom when he 
returned to his chill exaggerated rooms, satiated 
with some actress at the Burg Theatre, satiated 
with himself as well. At the saddest moment of 
his life, when his only son Rudolph died, I wonder 
whether his neglected wife stretched out a hand to 
soothe his grief. I would like to think she did. 

The idyll is related thus: Having gone to visit 
his uncle, Maximilian of Bavaria, intending to 
marry his eldest daughter, he chanced to see an- 
other small cousin, Elisabeth, and he fell in love, 
regardless of his Imperial dignity. A May even- 
ing, the shadows of pine-trees, an innocent plot to 
bring the child to a ball to which she had not been 
invited, blushes and pretty speeches — these sufficed 
to turn the proud, wayward young Emperor into 
a mild suitor. At last the betrothal was officially 
announced. That was his one good hour. 

If we knew how Francis Joseph's love came to 
life, we might also understand why it died so soon. 
He may have seen many strange and beautiful 



i68 Francis Joseph and His Court 

things in the strange eyes of his little cousin, but 
when those eyes reflected nothing but the tiresome 
halls of the Hofburg, the Emperor realised that 
his idyll had been on the surface only, and weariness 
ensued. Elisabeth might enjoy her solitary slum- 
bers undisturbed, for no one would come to rouse 
her. 

In 1855, a year after the marriage, his first daugh- 
ter, Sophia, was born only to die very soon, poor 
little thing. Elisabeth was very unhappy, for she 
had hoped to find a comfort in her loneliness, a 
rampart against the unkindness of her sour and 
hostile mother-in-law, the Archduchess Sophia. 

Another daughter, Gisella, appeared in 1856. 
"What a disgrace to have only daughters when you 
are the wife of an Emperor," was the Archduchess' 
polite remark to her daughter-in-law soon after 
the confinement. The dear lady was right. It was 
really scandalous. However, there was still time 
to do better. 

At last the male heir came, though it took two 
years. He was born on the 21st of August, 1858; 
and poor Elisabeth gave great sighs of relief. But 
the mother-in-law continued to put acid into her 



Francis Joseph, Paterfamilias 169 

talk and Francis Joseph was discreet enough to 
remain aloof. 

Some time accordingly elapsed before another 
'daughter appeared. Marie Valerie was born in 
1868. It is true that Elisabeth had spent a good 
part of the interval in racing round the world, im- 
pelled by her woes, and that her mind was some- 
what unhinged; this last child was the only fruit 
of her reconciliation. 

The Emperor displayed little tenderness towards 
children. But he devoted a certain amount of time 
to Rudolph. Always, however, with great reserve, 
as is meet for an Emperor. There had to be all 
sorts of strict regulations in the Court ceremonial. 
Oh! for those happy times when a king was only 
a good old father, who could sit in front of the 
fire and teach babies to dance on his knees. 

All the same, he was fond of Rudolph; and this 
made him specially resent a curse that was flung 
in his face at a public audience by a mother, who 
was a mediatised German Princess but at that mo- 
ment remembered only the fact that she was a 
mother. 

The thing happened in this way. I heard about 
it from my mother who was lady-in-waiting at the 



lyo Francis Joseph and His Court 

Palace that day and was in the room at the time. 
It was also talked about in my presence by other 
people, for the story had its vogue and used to be 
recalled later on whenever a fresh calamity over- 
took the Emperor. 

The Princess was the last of her race and had an 
only son, a very young and handsome subaltern 
who had only just left the military academy; he was 
the whole world to her. For some utterly silly rea- 
son, the boy was challenged to a duel one evening 
by a brother-olBcer, and it was to be quite a serious 
affair. The unhappy mother, half mad with fear, 
ran and threw herself at the Emperor's feet, im- 
ploring him to stop these children and avert a trag- 
edy. The duel was to take place in a couple of 
days. 

But the Emperor was very strict about all mat- 
ters of form and quite uncompromising about points 
of honour, especially about such as have no impor- 
tance. So he was hard and abrupt in his refusal. 

The mother, however, refused to abandon hope. 
Two days still remained. She applied for another 
audience on the morrow. This was granted, as it 
was a day of "public audience." The Emperor 
hardened his heart still more in the presence of high 



Francis Joseph, Paterfamilias 171 

Court dignitaries and made her no reply. Instead, 
he sent an adjutant to tell her that the duel had 
been hurried on by His Majesty's orders on the 
ground that it had to take place and no further 
interference could be tolerated. The adjutant add- 
ed that her son was dead. 

The poor Princess remained standing in the mid- 
dle of the hall, unable to open her lips. The Em- 
peror, the dignitaries, the gilded walls, everything 
seemed to have disappeared. Then at last a great 
wild cry burst forth from her very heart : "May your 
son die too ! May he come to a disgraceful end !" 

The Emperor was visibly disturbed. He made 
no attempt to conceal his feelings. The Court dig- 
nitaries were disturbed too, pale with horror at so 
gross^ a violation of all etiquette, as they watched 
the Princess depart like a revengeful Nemesis. 
They would have been paler still if they could have 
known that she was a true prophetess. 

THE EMPEROR AMUSES HIMSELF 

But you must not go away with the impression 
that the Emperor's life was one long lamentation. 
The fates seemed determined to make it so. There 
were political catastrophes enough and to spare. 



172 Francis Joseph and His Court 

A revolution heralded his accession to the throne; 
he lost Lombardy and Venice, the two loveliest and 
dearest of his provinces; his dreams of German 
hegemony were dissipated by an upstart sovereign 
and a middle-class politician; he saw all his astutest 
and absurdest diplomacy brought to naught; his 
august hands had to concede shreds of that liberty 
which he only denied to others because, poor fellow, 
he loved it too much for itself. His reign was a 
long succession of renunciations. And his private 
life proved even more bitter than his public one. 
There was no affectionate repose to be found in a 
wife whose absence provided an incessant, mute 
reproach ; in a strange and rebellious son ; in daugh- 
ters as cold as the education they had received; in 
the brothers, cousins, nephews, and all the race that 
wallowed in blood and slime like beings in Dante's 
Hell; no repose even when Death wielded her great 
scythe all round him until his Imperial person stood 
out alone in its ever increasing impotence. . . . But 
it is not to harp on such things that I have entitled 
this paragraph, "The Emperor amuses himself." I 
hope you understand that. 

Well, in spite of all his griefs, Francis Joseph 
often contrived to amuse himself. Sometimes 



Francis Joseph, Paterfamilias 173 

rather cruelly perhaps, as, for instance, in the case 
of Belfiore and the hundred executions after the 
Hungarian revolution. But as a rule fairly inno- 
cently. He was a regular patron of the drama, es- 
pecially at the Burg Theatre, and his artistic en- 
thusiasm often led him to send a sudden invitation 
to the leading lady to visit him in his Imperial apart- 
ment, even though the hour was quite late. The 
good, inquisitive people of Vienna have related 
dozens and dozens of instances of such august in- 
terest in the dramatic art of the nation. The only 
person who saw any harm in it was that strange 
Empress Elisabeth, and she had so little intelligence 
that her Viennese subjects used to call her "the 
little Bavarian goose." Intelligent or not, she man- 
aged to make herself unhappy over the business. 

By the way, it was from that class of actress that 
Francis Joseph eventually selected Catherine 
Schratt, the companion of his declining years. 

Then there was sport, the Emperor's other great 
passion. He could ride like a cow-boy and shoot as 
straight as any Swiss or Tyrolese. Many days of 
his busy life were given up to strenuous bear-hunts 
in the Carpathians and stag-hunts on the wooded 
hills near Vienna. Sport alone could induce him 



174 Francis Joseph and His Court 

to shake off his haughty manners when he crossed 
the boundaries of his domains. But even here his 
wife used to put spokes in his wheels. 

Sometimes I say to myself, "But even Francis 
Joseph must have taken his baby on his knees some- 
times and wanted to kiss him and hug him and feel 
intimate with him. Had he no desire for tender- 
ness? Or had he some premonition that those tiny 
hands, now tugging at his whiskers, would some 
day be steeped in filth; that in that small mind, 
now amused by a gold button or a nodding plume, 
terrible dramas would one day be hatched; that 
those baby cries might develop into a yell of rebel- 
lion?" We take these mysterious little beings into 
our arms and they contain all our future. 

He suffered too, that cruel, inscrutable Emperor, 
during the cold morning hours of that dying Janu- 
ary. And his sufferings must have been increased 
by the reflection that the fault was largely his. 

If Francis Joseph cared for his son — and he must 
have cared for him unless sovereigns are strangers 
to the laws of nature — ^he remained a stranger to 
his education. The boy was hardly born before the 
Emperor, defemng to the advice of his mother, the 
Archduchess Sophia, who hated Elisabeth, took him 



Francis Joseph, Paterfamilias 175 

away from his mother's care and gave him over to 
nurses and tutors. That was another occasion for 
EHsabeth's departure, so as not to have this annoy- 
ance always under her eyes. Little Rudolph's 
grandmother encouraged his pride and morbid self- 
indulgence, so that he grew up strange and sickly. 
Francis Joseph must have noticed this, for when 
the child was ten years old, he summoned his con- 
sort back to Court and she consented to return for 
her son's sake. Perhaps she persuaded herself that 
it was her duty to return not only as a mother but 
as a wife. If so, the illusion did not last long, only 
long enough to see the birth of her last daughter, 
Marie Valerie. And she gave herself up entirely 
to her little son. 

But she was not well fitted to bring him up either. 
It was necessary to yield in everything to the auto- 
cratic little invalid so as to win him by love. And 
she suffered to see his baby mind precociously 
satiated with life and sceptical about the future, 
tending unconsciously to sensuality, giving way des- 
perately to melancholy moods, weeping over Bee- 
thoven's Moonlight Sonata or Schubert's Lieder 
when she appealed to them to dispel the loneliness 
from her own heart. 



176 Francis Joseph and His Court 

One day when she scolded him for being naughty 
and told him God would not love him unless he be- 
came a better boy, he answered sternly and seri- 
ously, "God made me as I am. He must be con- 
tent with what He has made." 

Elisabeth had an intuition of the human grief 
which was beginning to possess his soul. Not so 
Francis Joseph. He had neither the time nor the 
inclination. Had he not given his beloved son good 
fencing-masters and professors of history for his 
education? And, for the salvation of his soul, 
there were as many confessors as any one could de- 
sire. 

When Rudolph came of age at sixteen, Francis 
Joseph again arranged to separate him from his 
mother, and she started off once more as a wan- 
derer on the face of the world. Now it became 
necessary to think seriously about the military edu- 
cation of the heir to the throne. 

But if Rudolph shared his father's fervent love 
for women and the chase, it was not the same with 
his military ardour. Indeed, all idea of discipline 
was repugnant to his free spirit. And by making 
militarism the basis of all their relationship, Fran- 
cis Joseph estranged him more and more, nourish- 



Francis Joseph, Paterfamilias 177 

ing rebellion in his heart. It is related how the 
Emperor alighted one day at a station where his 
son, who had now become a colonel, was waiting 
for him with a number of officers. Rudolph had 
not seen his father for some time and came forward 
to embrace him. But Francis Joseph checked his 
impulse with military coldness and said, "Have 
you any report to make to me, Colonel?" 

Thus it was that, in trying to make a soldier of 
him, he only succeeded in bringing him up to be a 
bad son and an unhappy man. 

Francis Joseph was always cold and almost hos- 
tile towards Stephanie, the wife of Rudolph, When- 
ever she burst like a jealous hurricane into the Em- 
peror's study and poured out tales of her husband's 
latest scandalous escapades, Francis Joseph re- 
ceived her with contemptuous and rather ironical 
pride. Let her look after herself. He was not 
responsible for his son's infidelities. And they 
wr"e comparatively unimportant. If only Rudolph 
had had healthier political ideas! But the tragic 
day of Meyerling brought the Emperor remorse 
for what he might have done and did not do. 

Thenceforward the series of his domestic calam- 
ities increased in volume. His wife went away for 



178 Francis Joseph and His Court 

the last time and died. Then his daughter-in-law 
Stephanie departed with her little daughter Elisa- 
beth, whom he dearly loved; and finally there was 
her marriage with Count Lonyay. 

His two daughters Gisella and Marie Valerie, 
married, one to Duke Leopold of Bavaria and the 
other to the Hapsburg Archduke Francis Salvador, 
rarely brought the chatter and smiles of their babies 
to the empty majesty of the halls of the Hofburg. 
The poor old Emperor began to feel the need of a 
comforter. 

She came in the person of Catherine Schratt, 
formerly an actress at the Burg Theatre, and only 
deceased a few years ago. First, his mistress. But 
what then? A good friend and nothing more? It 
is said that he married her morganatically. During 
her last years she lived at the Castle of Schonbrunn. 

And every morning the old Emperor drove in a 
closed carriage through the thick mists of winter 
by the light of a sickly little sun, or else strolled 
through the alleys amid the scents of new-mown 
hay and trees streaming with the dampness of a 
summer night, and she was always waiting to re- 
ceive him at the Castle with a fresh smile on her 
old face, there behind the panes of a low window. 



Francis Joseph, Paterfamilias 179 

There was no amorous poetry about their meet- 
ings, nothing like the romantic dallyings of the pale 
Duke of Reichstadt and the coquettish lady of the 
Austrian Court. But there was a good fire to keep 
out the bitter cold of winter, a refreshing drink 
prepared by cunning hands in parching summer- 
time. There was at least some one to pity him and 
welcome him if only with the wheeze of an elderly 
cough. 

How difficult it is to wind up a life when you 
have lived too long I 



CHAPTER X 
THE RAPACIOUS HAPSBURGS 

Thieves? No. God forbid! I should never for- 
give myself all my life if I brought such a charge 
against the Imperial and royal House. Let us say 
"political necessity," and we shall not go far wrong. 
Now we understand one another. 

You may say, "Yes, but a sovereign who set him- 
self to despoil rich families by lawsuits and illegal 
means! Everybody would discover such a thing 
at once and there would be as big a hullabaloo as 
if a dog were found barking in the midst of a flock 
of young geese." There you are quite mistaken. 

In Austria, the Emperor is the whole of the 
Hapsburg family, for he summarizes all their vir- 
tues, vices and tendencies. But that is not to say 
that all the Hapsburgs are the equivalent of the 
Emperor himself. 

Have you ever had dreams when you suffered 
from indigestion? Sometimes a devil-fish has ap- 
peared to me with glutinous, tearing tentacles that 

i8o 



The Rapacious Hapsburgs i8i 

sucked and penetrated everywhere, and it was no 
use cutting them off, for they just squirted some 
horrid black blood and there they were again. And 
one never knew where they came from. But at 
last the disgusting body got twisted up too, with 
its two ugly red eyes and a beak like a door-knocker 
rattling about. In Austria there have been many 
bad dreams like that. And not only in Austria, 
for the tentacles of the Hapsburgs travel far 
enough over Europe, and the Emperor knew how 
to make use of them. 

The Emperor was very fond of playing on the 
organ. You may not have known it, but there it 
was. Not of course the ordinary organ with its well- 
polished pipes and all sorts of wonderful voices. 
Francis Joseph's was quite a different instrument. 
It was begun by his ancestors, but in its ultimate 
shape it was almost entirely of his own making. 
And what a marvellous creation! Think that the 
pipes are dotted about here and there among many 
towns of Europe, both large and small, some actu- 
ally in royal palaces ; not only beneath smoky north- 
ern skies but in those three peninsulas which take 
warm baths in the blue Mediterranean. 

The Emperor had his keyboard at the Hofburg. 



l82 Francis Joseph and His Court 

The bellows were worked by his partisans with a 
current of air that pleased everybody. The tune 
reached the pipes by telegraph (that was his own 
invention). And he was an excellent player. 

Remember how many Hapsburgs there are in 
Europe, or else connections of theirs like the Co- 
burgs. Consult history and the Almanach de Go- 
tha. Then you will see how skilfully Francis Jos- 
eph made use of the various branches of his family 
and the fascinating graces of the numerous Arch- 
dukes and Archduchesses for his crafty matrimon- 
ial and domestic policy. 

There was one reed ready to his hand in Tus- 
cany. Peter Leopold and all his descendants. 
When he had extracted that tentacle from the Ital- 
ian flesh, cleaned it and repaired it, the Emperor 
cast it forth for the conquest of Saxony in the 
person of Louise Antoinette, now Mrs. Toselli. 
That fine attempt was not much of a success. Think 
of Marie Louise of Parma and her ugly but very 
intelligent lover, the imperial Count of Neipperg. 
Their children are now known by the Italianized 
name of Montenuovo. Then there was Duke Fran- 
cis IV. of Este. You remember his Austrophil 
policy and his betrayal of the Italian cause. It was 



The Rapacious Hapsburgs 183 

not for nothing that he was the nephew of Francis » 

I., the husband of Maria Theresa: and Francis 
Joseph's heir, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand and 
his brother Otho were of the family of Este too. 
And many other Italian princes were so much the 
servants of Austria in Italy that we are entitled to 
regard them as minor but by no means negligible 
members of the great Hapsburg family. So much 
for Italy. I might go on to speak of the formidable 
policy of the Hapsburgs in Wurtemberg and Ba- 
varia, where Hymen has woven its webs more than 
once with the illustrious house of Austria ; or of the 
series of unfortunate attempts with the Coburgs in 
Bulgaria and Belgium. Even the wife of the Duke 
of Orleans was an Austrian Archduchess. 

Is all this politics? Well, there has often been 
something still more solid than interests of state. 
Money! For nowadays the gods need money if 
they want to live happily on this venal planet, and 
the Olympus of the Hofburg cannot collect too 
much gold. How can gold be collected better than 
from the gifts of beauty offered by Nature to their 
young divinities ? Thus the very rich Prince Thurn 
and Taxis of Hatisbon married an imperial and 
royal Archduchess; another became Princess of 



184 Francis Joseph and His Court 

Lichtenstein; the Emperor's own niece married the 
Prince of Windischgraetz ; and his own daughter 
Gisella was content to become Duchess Leopold of 
Bavaria. Even Countess Wrbna, fairly rich and 
the daughter of a Sovereign House (the Viennese 
call her Wiirmb because they hate Slav names), 
was well received by the Emperor; she brought a 
big patrimony and rendered fairly complicated ser- 
vices to the Imperial House. As you see, we are 
here in presence of high matrimonial strategy and 
not of love aiFairs. You must admit that Francis 
Joseph, though by no means a genius in the ordi- 
nary way, was really an extraordinary man when 
he embarked upon what is called Familienpolitik 
and the defense of dynastic interests. 

One observation and then I will return to my 
argument. 

When members of their family were driven out 
by wars or revolutions, the Hapsburgs were not 
merely content to use them for the conquest of 
other thrones or at least of fat estates. There were 
so many other foreign families who had been turned 
out of house and home for the same or other reasons 
and who were on the lookout for new lodgings. 
The period between 1840 and 1870 was specially 



The Rapacious Hapsburgs 185 

full of them. The Hapsburgs gave them a friendly 
invitation to transfer their goods and chattels to 
Austria, where they would find themselves perfectly 
at home. 

A few who were weary of the solemnity of royal 
palaces went off to Paris. But most of them feared 
God and hoped with His help and that of their il- 
lustrious hosts, the Hapsburgs, to return one day 
to their ancient seats, so they came to Austria and 
stayed there. 

The hospitality was not precisely disinterested. 
These families had money and it was better that 
they should spend it on the sacred soil of Austria 
than anywhere else. Besides, they brought with 
them very many things that were well worth know- 
ing when you succeeded in winning their confidence. 
But the most useful thing of all was to acclimatise 
them beneath the plausible roof of the Hofburg. 
Austrophils they became first, then Austrians, 
eventually champions of the Austrian policy. A 
court of foreign families, all mediatised and aus- 
trofied — that was a fine dream for the Hapsburgs. 
In the past, when Austria was really a very great 
Power, she had already had the privilege of behold- 
ing at her Court a whole crowd of sovereigns or 



i86 Francis Joseph and His Court 

half-sovereigns. And she had been clever enough 
to make a good profit out of them. I need only- 
mention Prince Eugene of Savoy. 

So there came to Austria, among others, the old 
King of Hanover and all his family ; the Comte de 
Chambord, nephew of Charles X. and rightful heir 
to the throne of France, with his wife Maria Ther- 
esa, an Imperial and royal Princess of Austria ; the 
Schwarzenbergs, mediatised and exiled German 
Princes, who came to spend their enormous reve- 
nues; the famous Wiirttemberg, and the very 
rich and gifted Princess Clementine of Orleans, 
mother of Philip of Coburg and of the Bulgarian 
Czar. 

The following also took refuge in Austria: the 
Princes of Montleart, Rohan, Beaufort- Spontin, 
Talleyrand-Perigord, Blacas-d'Aulps ; the Mar- 
quises and Counts Bougnoi, Beaulieu-Marconney, 
Bombelles ; Desfours, and Latours, who was hanged 
on a lamp-post in 1848 by an infuriated mob. Also 
the Barons Seyssel-d'Aix, Cronier d' Orleans, Pic- 
cot de Paccaduc, and ever so many others. Also the 
sister of the Regent Luitpold of Bavaria, who bur- 
ied his two nephews, the mad kings. She spent her 
whole life at Vienna. And Alphonso XII. of 



The Rapacious Hapsburgs 187 

Spain was brought up at the Theresianum College, 
where he was a schoolfellow of my elder brother 
Hadrian. Alphonso afterwards married Marie 
Cristina, an Austrian Archduchess. These are 
merely a few that happen to occur to my mind. 
But they suffice to show what a big caravanserai 
Austria was for the dispossessed. Board and lodg- 
ing are dear there, but the place provides every 
comfort and the rapacious landlords do a roaring 
trade. 

Imperial and Royal rapacity. That is why there 
is a bird of prey on their coat of arms, a bird with 
very long claws. Touch it who dare! I am re- 
minded of an event that dates a very long way 
back. 

Have you forgotten Maria Theresa and the chiv- 
alrous Hungarian aristocracy? When the Empress 
was persecuted by her enemies, she sought refuge 
with her faithful Magyars who drew their swords 
and cried with one breath, "Moriamur pro rege 
nostra, 31 aria Teresar What was their reward? 
The Empress' relations and her noble ministers 
conceived the very generous plan of attracting the 
Hungarian aristocracy to Court in order to im- 



i88 Francis Joseph and His Court 

poverish it. The reason was that it was too rich 
and therefore too independent. 

So it was impoverished by the enormous extrav- 
agance of Court life, by taxes, by high offices, that 
cost milHons without bringing in a halfpenny of 
revenue. Up to then, the Hungarian aristocracy 
had lived as worthy country-gentlemen ; their castles 
had been designed for the storage of a great deal of 
grain, or for resisting those flights of locusts, the 
Turks, who came that way from time to time 
through force of habit. The life was that of rustic 
soldiers, who acquired riches and robust health. 
The thing was to ruin them with luxury and all 
sorts of costly habits, — in other words, to bring 
about their degeneration. As for their money and 
property, these would serve incidentally to fatten 
the Court of Vienna. 

I note with pleasure that Maria Theresa, the 
last of the real Hapsburgs, did not on that occasion 
behave as a Hapsburg of the present day would 
have done. She said to her Chancellor, Prince 
Kaunitz, the moral predecessor of Metternich, 
when he explained the crafty and ambiguous de- 
tails of this plan, ''Es ist zu abscheulichr — it is too 



The Rapacious Hapsburgs 189 

foul. And her fat, fair face betrayed real dis- 
gust. But her successors were not so squeamish. 

Maria Theresa was a strange sovereign. Per- 
haps because she was a woman, she could not adapt 
herself to the rapacious policy of her ancestors and 
successors, who trod and tread heavily on people 
and persons, crushing them for the benefit of the 
most illustrious House. And she was utterly op- 
posed to the partition of Poland. So much so that, 
when the decree was submitted for her Imperial 
approval, she wrote upon it, "Agreed! Because so 
many wise and important men desire it. All the 
same, when I shall have been long dead, you will 
realise the enormity of the evil and of the blunder 
you are committing." 

But Maria Theresa was a woman and her min- 
isters were watchful. The sound political sentiment 
of the august Hapsburg sovereign, a rare exception 
in her family, was confined to her honest intentions. 
And the valiant Hungarian aristocracy issued from 
the ordeal utterly ruined. It still exists to-day, but 
it is assailed by slier and more complicated methods 
than those of Prince Kaunitz. And among those 
who carry on the campaign, you will find Francis 
Joseph playing the part of an Imperial Shylock. 



190 Francis Joseph and His Court 

About the year 1900 he was a creditor of the Hun- 
garian Prince Esterhazy for more than twelve mil- 
lions of crowns and now you may consider him the 
virtual owner of the immense estates of that very 
noble family. 

And the partition- of Poland took place in due 
course. And now Austria is preparing to engulf 
the whole of Poland in her fat knapsack whence 
other ill-digested provinces are struggling to es- 
cape. She is already licking her lips. But she is 
like a greedy snake that watches a bird flying rather 
high up in the air. 

Just a moment. The old Emperor is sleeping, 
dressed, as he is so fond of dressing, in the costume 
of a Tyrolese sportsman. Let us look and see 
what there is in the sack which he has on his back. 
If you think of all his House's fabulous possessions 
in lands and castles, in every one of which you can 
still detect the badly muffled name of some other 
family, you will say, "Here is an application of the 
old distych, Tu, felioo Austria, nuhe.'" Look again, 
and nine times out of ten you will recognise the 
profits of continuous, systematic confiscations that 
have gone on for centuries. And the eight millions 
a year of the Emperor's uncle, the terrible Arch- 




Photograph, Paul Thompson. 

Francis Joseph in Hunting Costume 



The Rapacious Hapsburgs 191 

duke Albrecht? There is no denying that they af- 
forded ample compensation for the Custozza and 
Novara. And the financial smash of 1873? What 
a number of bankrupts among the Emperor's over- 
rich or over-independent followers. My father was 
among them, experiencing his second ruin after 
that which was brought about by his brother Oliver, 
losing his French fortune of three millions. It was 
only the Imperial and royal family which came out 
of the great financial disaster richer than ever. 

And now that the Hapsburgs have filled their 
sack so well, they decide to make use of the ser- 
vices of Aulic Councillor Wetsch. You remember 
I mentioned him in connexion with the parsimony 
of the Empress Elisabeth. His orders are to keep 
the dykes closed, to practise the most rigid economy, 
to tighten the purse-strings in view of worse times 
coming. And perhaps he has other orders too; to 
make financial reparation for the transfer of the 
Hapsburgs from Vienna to Budapest. That would 
accord with one of the clauses in Bismarck's famous 
political testament: "Out with Austria from the 
German body-politic!" And Bismarck's testament 
is undoubtedly but a new edition of an older decla- 



192 Francis Joseph and His Court 

ration, that of Charlemagne, who saw in the "Ost- 
mark" a sturdy bulwark against Asia. 

Is that to be? Poor new victims in that easel 
The privileged Imperial rapacity will work won- 
ders for Poland, perhaps for the Ukraine, certainly 
for Hungary, even greater wonders than those 
which have gone before. 

But the fate of peoples usually moves us less 
deeply than that of a family. I could tell you so 
many stories, both new and old, to bring home to 
you the exceptional voracity of this illustrious 
House. 

I have already afforded you a few hints in the 
course of my memoirs: for instance, the struggle 
to relieve Louise and Stephanie of their rich pa- 
ternal inheritance. To-day my memory is full of 
another sad case, that goes some years back; I have 
myself lived through the last pages of the story. 

At Vienna in 1845 or later. A narrow, tortuous 
street, which seemed of a morning to have some 
difficulty in separating itself from the shades of 
night. Many low, dark beer-houses puffed their 
acrid fumes onto the roadway. In a corner was a 
little hat- shop. Nothing smart about it, you may 
be sure. Bonnets and caps, fixed together with a 



The Rapacious Hapsburgs 193 

few rags, the sort of things for work-girls and 
market-women when they wanted to deck them- 
selves out for Sundays. Or some little hat made 
out of next to nothing, say two flowers and two rib- 
bons, might peep out with a springtime smile. You 
could detect a certain amount of taste in the win- 
dow, and it was obviously not that of Mrs. Geiger, 
the proprietor. Perhaps that of her daughter, that 
small, plump girl with straw-coloured hair, a pleas- 
ant little face and china-blue eyes that seemed al- 
ways full of wonder. She was called Konstanze 
and was such a strange child. For instance, she 
was not satisfied with making hats, like her mother. 
No, she had insisted on becoming an actress at the 
Karl Theatre, where the public had given her a 
terrible nickname, das Wunderwutzerl, the little 
whirling wonder, in allusion to her movements and 
expression. The public of Vienna is mischievous 
especially towards respectable actresses. And 
against the respectability of little Konstanze Geiger 
there was nothing to be imagined. She had a hard 
life of it, however, poor thing. In the mornings, 
she made hats with a certain amount of taste. In 
the drowsy afternoon hours she gave herself up to 
the consoling voices of her only real friends, the 



194 Francis Joseph and His Court 

piano and the violin. Her music was like her soul. 
It seemed to have been fashioned out of the said 
shadows of that wretched back-shop, out of the 
rare gaiety afforded by a bit of blue sky filtering 
through the old houses and sad longings to see it 
again when it disappeared. And so one day she 
became a famous pianist. 

She left the hat-shop and the Karl Theatre to 
give concerts in fashionable houses. She always 
appeared at the soirees of my maternal grandfather, 
Count Strachwitz, in his palace in the Jagerzeile, 
now rechristened Praterstrasse. She must have 
been about my mother's age and they became good 
friends. 

It was thus that my mother became aware of an 
idyll that no one else had noticed, an idyll that 
grew up very quietly, making no more noise about 
its birth and growth than a blade of grass. There 
had been only an exchange of glances with the 
young Prince who sat near her piano, nearer than 
anybody else, in the melancholy atmosphere of the 
candles, in the vague shiver of a soft sonata. Some- 
times, while a page was being turned, a whisper of 
love. 

One fine day the aristocratic world of Austria 



The Rapacious Hapsburgs 195 

was astounded by the news of the engagement of 
H.R.H. Duke Ernest of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha-Ko- 
hary to the poor, dear Wunderwutzerl. 

The wedding took place. But the Duke well 
knew the greed of his illustrious family and his still 
more illustrious relatives, the Hapsburgs. The 
very rich patrimony of the Koharys belonged to 
him and he wanted to guarantee the enjoyment of 
it to his wife and children in any case. So he con- 
tracted the marriage in a special way with quite 
new judicial forms and unusual precautions in or- 
der to protect his family against the attacks which 
he undoubtedly foresaw. 

This marriage was unique in legal history and is 
tabulated as the Koburger-Heirat. 

But it was of no avail. The Duke died very soon, 
leaving a widow who had no experience of intrigues 
and a son who was too young to ' defend himself and 
his mother. Then the rapacity of the Court of 
Vienna stood revealed in the light of day. 

The Emperor Francis Joseph had conferred up- 
on Konstanze Geiger the name and title of Baro- 
ness of Rutterstein on the occasion of her marriage. 
But whether directly or indirectly, he backed up 
the shameful conspiracy of Duke Ernest's family 



196 Francis Joseph and His Court 

against the poor Baroness and her son, Duke Fran- 
cis, in favour of that shining light of all the virtues, 
Philip of Coburg. And among the most dangerous 
enemies of the Baroness was Princess Clementine 
of Coburg-Orleans, the mother of Philip of Coburg 
and of King Ferdinand of Bulgaria. 

There was no trickery or legal process or injus- 
tice which they did not use to deprive the widow 
of the whole of her husband's fortune. Of course 
they succeeded. Baroness Rutterstein and her son 
Francis, despoiled of all the property which Duke 
Ernest had possessed in Austria, followed by con- 
tinuous persecutions, had to retire to Paris. 

It was at Paris in 1886, when I was there with 
my mother, that we renewed acquaintance with 
Baroness Rutterstein and her son, Duke Francis 
of Coburg-Rutterstein. They were living in a 
large house in the rue Pergolese, on a sum of 
money that was considerable in itself but small in 
comparison with the stolen fortune. The late Duke 
Ernest had had the foresight to deposit it with the 
Bank of England, out of the reach of the claws of 
the two-headed eagle. But the persecution was 
not relaxed even in Paris. Demands came from 
Vienna for the return of the money deposited 



The Rapacious Hapsburgs 197 

abroad, but the Bank of England refused point- 
blank. So the hunger of the Hapsburgs remained 
unsatisfied. 

Baroness Butterstein then brought an action 
against her husband's relatives to recover her for- 
tune. My mother was her best friend and also had 
old scores against the Court of Vienna. I remem- 
ber her translating and copying out for the Baron- 
ess the long and complicated will of Duke Ernest, 
which left the whole of his property to his widow. 
She did it in an incredibly short time, working at it 
for two days and two nights. It was a fierce and 
almost fruitless struggle. For the Baroness had 
the utmost drfficulty in obtaining an annuity for her 
son, it appears, through the personal intervention of 
Queen Victoria of England. Five hundred pounds 
a year, not so much as half the usual allowance of 
the Princes of the House of Coburg. 

Nor did the persecutions of the Coburgs stop 
here, backed up as they were by the Court of 
Vienna. I was present one day when the Baroness 
brought a very serious charge against Princess 
Clementine, the mother of Philip of Coburg. The 
charge was one of attempted poisoning and the 
Baroness would certainly have succumbed if Dr. 



198 Francis Joseph and His Court 

Morin had not chanced to come to the rue Pergolese 
at the right moment. 

Baroness Rutterstein and her son are both dead. 
He has left some memoirs of his brief Hfe and they 
are full of pessimism. 

The savage pursuit of them and their millions 
was specially intended to enrich Philip of Coburg, 
now a general of cavalry if his many years and 
many libations and the consequences of his orgies 
still permit him to sit on horseback. And it ap- 
pears to me a certain consolation to think that at 
least some part of the money which dearest Philip 
stole from Konstanze Geiger was scattered to the 
four winds by his wife. 

So now you have this bright proof of the disin- 
terestedness of the Hapsburgs. I reflect with some 
bitterness that in Austria, if you want to bestow 
fortunes on people of the type of Mr. Schanz, Louis 
Victor's handsome friend, you must first rob some 
one like the poor honest .Wunderwutzerl of all that 
she possesses. And I could give you many other 
similar examples. But I will content myself with 
relating what my own family had to sufPer through 
the intrigues of the Court of Vienna. 

That, however, on another occasion. 



CHAPTER XI 

FRANCIS JOSEPH, MAN OF THE 
WORLD 

It is said that old age brings peaceful little white 
clouds upon a sky that has resigned itself not to 
see to-morrow's sun. It derives from its experiences 
the right to laugh at so many things, to reflect that 
it was not really worth while to endure fatigue 
and suffering in order to come so far. There is 
nothing to be done but stand still and wait for 
death. 

That being so, you will agree that Francis Jos- 
eph had a very strange nature. To have outlived 
misfortunes may be a negative gift, and family 
virtues belong to the average honest burgher. But 
to have troubled about the affairs of your country 
after reigning sixty-eight years, to persevere with 
all the outward manifestations of life at an age 
when others scarcely retain a spark of affection or 
a sense of pain, — these belong to no common sov- 
ereign or man. As a sovereign, Francis Joseph 

199 



200 Francis Joseph and His Court 

had been neither admirable nor fortunate. His 
reign was full of hesitations and empty labours and 
humiliating renunciations. But it is rare in history 
for a king to have defended a more damnable polit- 
ical and social system by more brilliant and solid 
personal efforts in more hopelessly difficult circum- 
stances. We must admit that. And the outward 
forms of his sovereignty have remained the same 
as they were centuries ago. If there has been any 
movement, it has been retrograde. And the forms 
still retain a certain amount of solemnity. 

Without any of the impulses of youth or success 
or novelty, the Emperor continued to play his Im- 
perial part. He was an ancient clock that per- 
sisted in telling the time with an old cuckoo-voice, 
and it is impossible to say how he managed it, for 
no one had wound him up for a long time. The 
cares of State, the practices of religion, official 
ceremonies, social affairs still found him faithful at 
his post. 

Francis Joseph was a decorative sovereign. At 
any moment of his day, sheathed in any one of his 
uniforms, placed in any one of his many frames — 
at the Hofburg, at the Court Chapel of St. Stephen, 
at the Hoftafel of his banquets, at the Burg The- 



Francis Joseph, Man of the World 201 

atre, at the Exerzierplatz for his reviews, at Ischl 
and Gmunden for his holidays and hunts, he would 
pose so well that he might have been mistaken for a 
picture. Schonbrunn, however, was the frame which 
had been made on purpose for him. 

That majestic castle with its lofty front and the 
straight lines over the windows, like serene and 
severe eye-brows, the solemn halls within, and be- 
tween them some intimate and shady corners, the 
magnificent conservatories, the avenues with plenty 
of room to breathe, the light and chatter of the 
fountains, and its very own horizon, closed in every- 
where with trees and statues and huge vases — ^here 
the Emperor, who was born at Schonbrunn, lived in 
his appropriate atmosphere. For from the halls 
and the avenues, from the dusty odours of the tap- 
estry and the pungent perfume of the myrtles, 
there issued something very soothing to a heart 
that still sighed for olden times. Everything pro- 
claimed living memories of Maria Theresa, a frown 
of vengeance against Napoleon I. and his spirit, a 
clever mystification of all our epoch, a whole pro- 
gramme in fine. I think that, when he entered here, 
Francis Joseph shook off all the dust from his 
shoes and stockings, shook it off because it was all 



202 Francis Joseph and His Court 

too modern. Less tall and yet as big as the resi- 
dence of the Sun-King, it bears a superficial like- 
ness to its brother (all the castles of sovereigns are 
at least half-brothers), but it possesses a particular 
and very special note of its own. 

That is to be found in the very great profusion 
of Chinese ornaments. There are whole rooms full 
of precious old porcelain. Both Vienna and Schon- 
brunn face the East, whence a hand was stretched, 
not for the first time, under the guidance of Kara 
Mustapha, to try to take the capital. Strange what 
a lavish flood of sunshine from fragrant distant 
lands in the gaudy halls which framed Napoleon 
and the humbled sovereigns; Francis Joseph went 
there to forget his cares during one moment of the 
day. Then the throne-room, where he received the 
vows and deferential congratulations of all the prin- 
cipal Germans and all the scholars of Vienna. A 
prelude to the situation of to-day. Who knows if 
the very old tiger would not have preferred a little 
less deference and a little more independence? But 
habant sua fata lihelli. And Empires too. 

The Hofburg on the other hand is colder and 
more silent. Perhaps because it has too many 
things to say. It is the real royal dwelling, where 



Francis Joseph, Man of the World 203 

the Sovereign could find a single corner in which to 
forget his cares, and everything stood to attention 
in order to proclaim that he was king. And those 
who do not belong to the house, let them take heed 
how they step across the halls, for they will see 
a menace in their own reflections on the polished 
floors, on every wall, in the mirrors and the mar- 
bles. The shadows are violent by day and curl 
themselves up in self-defence to sufl'ocate any 
gleams of intrusive sunlight on the rare occasions 
when it visits Vienna. In the evenings there are 
people fast asleep in one hall, people quarrelling in 
another, always very quietly by the good old light 
of candles. 

What! Candles? Surely we are in the twentieth 
century. Oh! yes, but Francis Joseph had a holy 
horror of electric light. Was it an instinctive repul- 
sion or a resentment of everything connected with 
modern times? In any case he hated electric light. 
So even at high Court festivals, the Imperial orders 
were that fine wax candles or wollratJi, a fat per- 
fumed substance extracted from the brains of 
whales, should be used to light up the halls of the 
Hofburg. In my opinion, the Emperor was quite 
right. The reflections of the candles on the granites 



204 Francis Joseph and His Court 

and polished mirrors and the silver vases and an- 
cestral bronzes and the Chinese porcelain produced 
fairy-tale eiFects. For the Hofburg is beautiful, 
and even pretty women do not appear at their best 
in an impudent blaze of light. The Emperor knew 
that: he never permitted the installation of electric 
light in his bed-room. 

Do not be surprised if I introduce the Emper- 
or's doings as a man of the world by referring to 
his religious practices. I do not propose to follow 
the august sinner into the confessional-box or diag- 
nose his conscience while he was on his knees. I 
only want to recall those ecclesiastical ceremonies 
on which the Emperor's participation conferred an 
official character. 

There is the very solemn procession of Corpus 
Domini, when the Sovereign follows the baldaquin 
of the Holy Sacrament bareheaded and barefoot. 
I do not suppose the Ruler of the Universe rejoices 
over it specially, but the Austrian clergy do, for it 
recognises an acknowledgment of their power. 

The religious ceremony of the washing of feet is 
characteristic. There the twelve oldest citizens of 
Vienna saw the Emperor kneel before them; they 
stretched out their respective feet and the Emperor 



Francis Joseph, Man of the World 205 

washed them one by one. The twenty-four feet 
had naturally been washed previously, for I forgot 
to mention that the twelve citizens must all be very 
poor and they had no facilities for washing at 
home. 

After the washing, they received a purse of 
money, which the Sovereign placed round their 
necks. Then there was a dinner, suited to their 
aged stomachs, and they were waited on by the 
chief Court dignitaries. 

On this and other similar occasions the Emperor 
wore his highest uniforms, very often that of a 
field-marshal, with a white tunic and a big collar 
embroidered with oak-leaves and stupendous trou- 
sers of vivid red with broad bands of glittering 
gold. With reference to the Imperial trousers, I 
remember a tragi-comic episode, which I have 
heard my mother relate when I was a boy. My 
eldest brother was the chief actor in the drama, 
Hadrian, who, as I have mentioned, is shut up in 
the "noble madhouse" of Dr. Pierson at Koswig. 
Hadrian was brought up at the famous Theresi- 
anum College which has the honour of supplying 
the Emperor with his pages, young nobles who are 



2o6 Francis Joseph and His Court 

indispensable to Court ceremonies, and he served 
as a page too for some time. 

But, though he was a good musician and mathe- 
matician, he was always a bit strange and lived 
with his head in the clouds. That is how he fell into 
disgrace with the Sovereign and lost a post that 
was very honourable but in no way remunerative. 

It happened in this way. There was a solemn 
function, I forget whether it was at the Court 
chapel or in the Cathedral of St, Stephen. Francis 
Joseph was present with the whole Court and the 
diplomatic body. At a certain moment, the Sov- 
ereign had to kiss the Gospels. On each side of 
him stood a page in white, red, gold and lace, hold- 
ing an armoured candlestick with a wax-candle of 
prodigious proportions. That day, perhaps in 
1875, Hadrian was one of the two pages. My 
mother was among the Court ladies, watching the 
scene, when she suddenly had a fearful shock. The 
priests glittered with gold and precious stones, the 
incense rose to the Gothic roof, the austere court- 
iers stiffened themselves in all the starch of eti- 
quette, the Emperor bent to kiss the Gospels, at his 
side Hadrian held the huge candle aloft. The or- 
gan and the choir — those were the true culprits. It 



Francis Joseph, Man of the World 207 

was really delightful music. Hadrian, having an 
extraordinarily sensitive soul for music, let his 
mind wander thousands of miles away, wrapt in 
dreams. The trembling of his hand communicated 
itself to the big fat candle. Anyhow, that too be- 
gan to weep with all its hot liquid soul, covering 
the Emperor's magnificent trousers with its tears. 

My mother observed this with terror; the diplo- 
matists remarked it still more, for they were 
nearer; the Emperor noticed it most of all and 
looked at my mother who was now paler than the 
candle, but he said nothing. The only person who 
remained sublimely unconscious was my brother 
Hadrian, the unfortunate author of the crime. It 
was the last time that he served the Emperor. 

The most solemn religious ceremonies usually 
took place in the Gothic cathedral of St. Stephen 
with its heavy majestic aisles and the old reredos 
and pulpit which are two poems of lace wrought in 
stone and browned by time. The high altar was 
covered with artistic work of the purest silver, the 
columns were draped with rich tapestry, a marvel- 
lous choir produced classical and ecclesiastical mu- 
sic. Even Beelzebub would have been intoxicated 
by the harmonies of form and sound and colour. 



2o8 Francis Joseph and His Court 

The Emperor maintained an exemplary de- 
meanour during the longest ceremonies. Some- 
times impatience, tyrannical nymph, began to pos- 
sess him. Then the nearest diplomats would no- 
tice that he shifted his position from time to time, 
his body resting iSrst on his right foot, then on the 
left. This habit was well known to his intimp-tes. 
Then the priests recited their prayers more rapidly, 
the maestoso and the lento of the admirable choir 
became almost imperceptibly movimentato and al- 
legretto, the voice of the celebrant assumed a cer- 
tain urgency and the genuflexions increased their 
pace. The diplomatists, old foxes, understood and 
looked intently at His Majesty's faithful chamber- 
lain, who was waiting behind a pillar for his august 
master. 

The very high position accorded to the clergy in 
Francis Joseph's reign was emphasised at these 
solemn functions. It was also emphasised, though 
perhaps more discreetly, in the life of Court, aris- 
tocracy and people. 

Thus an Austrian Cardinal cannot be legally 
compelled to give evidence in a law-suit against his 
will. This very important privilege is conceded only 



Francis Joseph, Man of the World 209 

to sovereign princes and to their immediate prog- 
eny. 

Then the Nuncio, even though he be not a Car- 
dinal, is always treated at Court as though he were 
a Sovereign. The two flaps of the monumental door 
of the throne-room are thrown open for him, while 
only one is opened for a noble, however high his 
rank. The whole ceremonial for the reception of 
a Nuncio is the same as that for Sovereigns, and 
differs from that accorded to Ambassadors of the 
first and second rank, that is to say the Botschafter 
and the Gesandten. In a procession the Nuncio 
walks quite alone after the Imperial and royal arch- 
dukes, then the diplomatic body all together. 

I insist on this point, for it is essential to a 
proper understanding of the Austrian Court. 
There is probably not in the whole of Austria a 
single Catholic noble family ( and the immense ma- 
jority is Catholic) that does not count a priest or 
monk among the high ranks of the clergy. And 
it is he who always directs the destinies of the race 
with the utmost astuteness and discretion. 

The power of the Jesuit Father H A , 

to whom I have already alluded, is unimaginable. 
And it was probably greater still during the life- 



210 Francis Joseph and His Court 

time of Francis Ferdinand, his pupil and mental 
creature. 

I must already have mentioned that, at Ru- 
dolph's wedding-breakfast, Francis Joseph ate in 
a hurry as though he were pursued by Tartars. 
That figure of speech is not mine, but that of old 
Count Lamezan, who said it with reference to the 
Emperor's usual meals. He never departed from 
the habit. He dined at a table by himself, indulg- 
ing in rapid, badly masticated mouthfuls, just the 
opposite of Gladstone who used to bite and rumi- 
nate for a long time. His dinners were very fru- 
gal : a little broth, a small piece of boiled beef with 
very few vegetables, often a flour-pudding, and 
two fingers of wine with much mineral water. 
Take note of this bill of fare : it may be the secret 
of living to be eighty-six. And the Emperor's 
light meal was just the same at the Hoftafel, or 
Court banquet. But the Court of Vienna was 
shrewd enough to take precautions with the cooks 
for the provision of an opulent repast. It passes 
by whatever it does not specially fancy, for it 
knows that there are better dishes to follow. The 
wines are excellent, but, according to etiquette, 
served sparingly, so much so that the devotees of 



Francis Joseph, Man of the World 21 1 

Bacchus, especially Orientals, are wont to appro- 
priate the bumpers of abstemious neighbours. 
And afterwards there is a scramble for the rich 
boxes of sweet-meats from Sacher, Gerstner, Deni- 
mel and other celebrated confectioners. These are 
all carried away, and the ladies are the most shame- 
less in pursuit of them. 

The Empress Elisabeth used to eat scarcely any- 
thing at Court banquets. Pale, cold, motionless, a 
regular Niobe petrified with grief, she used to at- 
tend these culinary feasts with a look of disgust 
on her face. 

The Sovereigns and the imperial family always 
took tea in a separate room, where only ambassa- 
dors had the right to be present. The Court con- 
certs, on the other hand, brought all together 
again. And I may mention here that the Em- 
peror's hatred of Italy did not extend to music, 
for he allowed the best Italian artists, such as the 
harpist Zamara and the pianist Stanzieri, to per- 
form. I can tell you they were worth listening to. 

Then there was the Strauss orchestra, most per- 
fect. So perfect was it in harmony and rhythm 
that one day, or rather one evening, the beautiful 
Duchess Tvra of Cupiberland was carried away 



212 Francis Joseph and His Court 

by the melody and forgot etiquette so far as to 
beat time with her feet. At that moment the Em- 
peror, who was staring at her little foot, perhaps in 
order to appreciate the music better, was carried 
away by a strange suggestion and began to beat 
time too. Others followed suit and thus it became 
the fashion at Court concerts for a certain period 
to beat time with the feet. 

Francis Joseph was a very rigid observer of 
the complicated laws of etiquette, especially of 
military etiquette. And to ensure their observance 
he displayed all the natural instincts of an absolute 
and tyrannical sovereign; indeed, he would display 
them still more severely but for the influence of 
modern times and the legacies with which the 
French Revolution has oppressed poor sovereigns. 

Sometimes his indignation at seeing the most 
important regulations neglected set fire to the vio- 
lence of his Imperial character. He then gave way 
to epileptic fury. And the cream of the joke is 
that he was then himself the one to depart thou- 
sands of miles from that composure which etiquette 
imposed. 

I will mention a few small matters of everydajT- 
life. For instance, officers' boots must not be var- 



Francis Joseph, Man of the World 213 

nished or have any sewing or pattern on the toes. 
The penalty is zimmer arrest^ confinement to your 
room. It has happened to many men to enter the 
royal palace with beautifully shining boots and to 
go out again very quickly to shut themselves up 
at home for who knows how many days. 

Then the law is that gloves are to be of plain 
wash leather. One day the young Prince Thurn 
and Taxis came to Court in glace gloves and could 
escape only with the utmost difficulty from the fury 
of his epileptic Majesty. I assure you that it 
would have been a much smaller offence to have 
committed a crime. For crimes merely transgress 
the laws made by men, whereas wearing varnished 
boots and glace gloves is rebellion against the su- 
preme Imperial will. I should like to have seen 
Francis Joseph reigning in times when there were 
no horrible parliaments and fewer middle-class re- 
strictions on royal authority. Then he could have 
hanged people for mistaking their boots or their 
gloves. 

My father was once pounced upon. He, a 
French noble, came to Austria when he married 
the Austrian Countess Strachwitz and obtained the 
rank of chamberlain at the Court of Vienna. It 



214 Francis Joseph and His Court 

was a distinguished post but not a bed of roses, for 
the Emperor, though still young, was already ir- 
ritable, restless, difficult to content. For instance, 
he hated a certain way of doing the hair, which con- 
sisted in parting it at the back of the head, and he 
had formally forbidden it to his chamberlains. My 
father, however, liked to do his hair that way, and 
I do not pretend to say which of the two was in 
the right. And, like a modern, microscopic ver- 
sion of the old rebel Rakoczy, he flouted the Im- 
perial order and did his hair in his own way when- 
ever he did not have to go to Court. 

So one summer afternoon, amid a gay clatter of 
carriages and crowds of people surging through the 
sun and dust and the blue shadows of the lime- 
trees, he walked along the Prater with my mother 
on his arm, rejoicing in the symmetry of the care- 
ful parting at the back of his head. He was per- 
fectly calm and happy, never dreaming of a pos- 
sible storm with such bright sunshine. But when 
he reached the Platerstern, the storm broke. He 
had not noticed that the Imperial carriage was 
catching him up, an open carriage as usual, drawn 
by two big horses with a Leibjdger in bottle-green 
seated beside the coachman. Within the carriage, 



Francis Joseph, Man of the World 215 

was the sacred and irate person of the Emperor 
with an adjutant by his side. 

Suddenly the carriage stopped. The adjutant 
jumped out and hurried after my father, bearing 
a terrible message: "As the Count is wearing his 
hair in a way expressly forbidden by His Majesty, 
the Count will return home at once and remain 
there for twenty-one days. I have the honour to 
salute the Count." 

This said, the instrument of the Imperial wrath 
re-entered the sovereign's carriage and it went on 
its way. 

So my parents had to give up their enjoyment 
of the sun and the trees and the fashionable prome- 
nade. But when on the following day my mother 
received an invitation or command to be present at 
an intimate reception at the Hofburg, the answer 
was that the Countess would remain at home to 
keep her husband company. 

These, after all, were trifling expressions of 
Francis Joseph's dictatorial character. He was 
even stricter than the strictest Austrian etiquette, 
and he once obliged one of his ministers to resign 
merely because, in the heat of a discussion at the 



2i6 Francis Joseph and His Court 

Council, he had permitted himself to thump the 
big table in the presence of the Emperor. 

But the Emperor's stubborn will did not stop 
at that. It would have been too little. He, the 
potent sovereign, had found in his will a still more 
domineering tyrant. His will had ruled all the acts 
of his life and involved him in most of his tragedies. 

I have already mentioned the duel which he in- 
sisted upon and which, besides costing the life of a 
young Prince, exposed the Imperial head to a 
mother's malediction that he often had cause to re- 
member during his long life. 

The people too owe many of their misfortunes 
to the sovereign's will. For at a period of puppet- 
kings in the hands of ministries, it was his will 
which made Francis Joseph a real Emperor, con- 
ceived on ancient lines, capable of proclaiming his 
ideas and imposing them with a word. And the 
consequences were often tragic. 

I remember in this connection a scene at a very 
important council of war in 1866, at which one of 
my uncles, a high officer, was present. It was not 
an easy moment for Austria. War was going on 
both with Prussia and Italy. The Council had to 
decide on the plan of campaign. Besides the Em- 



Francis Joseph, Man of the World 217 

peror and many Archdukes and generals, there 
were his uncle, the warlike Archduke Albrecht, he 
of Custozza and Novara, and brave General Bene- 
dek, who was then commander-in-chief against his 
will, for the Emperor had insisted on his assuming 
the heavy responsibility of conducting the opera- 
tions against the Prussian army in Bohemia. 

Benedek, pale and hesitating, kept repeating, 

"Your Majesty, I can be of some use for the 
operations in Lombardy, but I should be a fish 
out of water for those in Bohemia. I beg and en- 
treat you most urgently, do not employ me where 
I could not and should not know how to be useful." 
The Emperor replied with violence, "You are a 
soldier. All you have to do is to obey." 

And after a moment of silent anguish, still hard 
and menacing, he bent over the big map on the 
table. "You will attack there and there," he said, 
traversing mountains and rivers with a nervous 
finger, "and we shall win, shall we not?" 

To which Benedek replied slowly and heavily, 
"In that case we are lost. Your Majesty. How- 
ever, I bow to your will." 

Then the Emperor, forgetting the presence of 
his uncle Albrecht, of whom he stood in great awe. 



2i8 Francis Joseph and His Court 

struck the green table with his fist and cried with 
great violence and concentrated fury, "Why lost, 
I ask you, why?" 

Dumb and obedient, according to rule, the 
Council approved the Imperial will. And it was 
quickly followed by Sadowa and a court-martial 
on Benedek and the beginning of Austria's en- 
slaving by Germany. And now comes the joint 
campaign in the Carpathians, which, even won, 
will always prove the worst of defeats for Aus- 
tria. "Oh! save, oh! save me from my friends!" 
Thus was this Emperor. Out of his will, harder 
than a block of granite, he fashioned a sort of uni- 
form to wear on grand occasions. He broke the 
will of those who dwelt about him, of every amor- 
ous and rebellious Archduke: more than one of 
them owes his moral ruin to the firm opposition 
of Francis Joseph. He imposed the most serene 
coldness on himself and his griefs, so much so that, 
on the death of Elisabeth, whom he had surely tor- 
tured enough, he could actually say, "The world 
has no idea how I loved that woman!" He 
held his head erect on the day of the funeral of 
his only son; and he accompanied his young neph- 
ews to their last resting-place as though he were 



Francis Joseph, Man of the World 219 

taking a stroll. And then, at eighty-four years of 
age, still with an iron fist, he coldly, wisely, delib- 
erately set Europe in a blaze. Even now he did 
not give way. It was time, according to him, to 
abandon the earthly game. Perhaps he was pre- 
paring to wrestle with the supreme will of the 
Eternal Father in the world beyond the skies. 

He was above all a military Emperor. But you 
know the campaigns in which he took an active part 
as a young man; you know his exclusive devotion 
to everything that had to do with the army; you 
have seen him in photographs, on horseback and 
on foot, reviewing his soldiers; so there is no need 
for me to speak of these things. 

I will only say that I have observed and even 
admired his persistently fine presence and the 
physical endurance which had rebelled against na- 
ture's laws on more than one occasion even in 1907 
and 1908 when he was nearer eighty than seventy. 
I remember him at the great annual review on the 
Schmelz, a kind of parade-ground at Vienna. 
From the back of his old horse, another miracle of 
preservation, he cut on the whole a finer figure 
than the many generals around him, though they 
were younger by twenty years : under the July sun 



220 Francis Joseph and His Court 

they seemed broken down. The horse, I assure 
you, was worthy of his master; a friendly Heaven 
must have created them so that they might be born 
and die together. I had the honour of stroking 
the noble animal one day at the famous Imperial 
stables of Lippizra on the Carso near Trieste. 

The sovereign was untirable at a review. He 
interested himself in every single soldier, almost in 
every single button on every single soldier. To 
go from one body of troops to another, the old 
Emperor and the old horse tore like a whirlwind; 
many of the more or less exotic attaches of his 
immense suite lost all faith in their equestrian ex- 
perience at such critical moments. Then, when he 
proceeded to the inspection, Francis Joseph be- 
came slow, very slow, a redskin scouting behind a 
thicket. He went through the inspection with 
great care. 

I cannot say that he had ever been cruel to his 
soldiers. He rather displayed a certain benevo- 
lence, and at that time you may have wagered that 
he was not playing a part in a comedy. But he 
demanded and exacted all their strength and all 
their powers of resistance without mercy. If he 
was not saluted, he said nothing. If a Tyrolese, 




Photograph, Paul Thompson. 

Francis Joseph from a Painting by Julius Ritter von Blaas 



Francis Joseph, Man of the World 221 

with the frankness of his mountains, called him 
"thou," he smiled with satisfaction. But if the 
man did not know how to shoot, then there was 
trouble. For everybody in Tyrol is supposed to 
be born with a gun in his hand. And the Em- 
peror had taken more trouble over the formation 
of shooting-clubs in Austria than he had over li- 
braries : all those clubs were in direct relations with 
the Sovereign, who paid for them out of his own 
pocket. They were more important for the na- 
tion than a whole council of ministers. 

*'I can have as many ministers as I want; but a 
steady hand, sharp eyes and first-class guns are 
far more rare." Those were his words and they 
seem to me to contain a whole programme; they 
reveal the utter difference between the Latin and 
the Austro-German points of view. 

On the other hand, he was cruel with his gen- 
erals. High officers in the army had plenty of op- 
portunities of making acquaintance with his bru- 
tality, at least of speech, when anything had not 
gone quite rightly according to his point of view 
at a critical moment. Here is an example. Veiy 
many years ago, one of my relations, I think a cou- 
sin of my mother, Baron Strachwitz, of the Austro- 



222 Francis Joseph and His Court 

Silesian branch, was a general in the army. He was 
a violent man, of very limited intelligence, but full 
of pride and fat enough to suggest apoplexy. There 
were manoeuvres on a hilly plain, and a fierce July 
sun was rendered all the more trying by the im- 
minent approach of a thunderstorm. Generals, sol- 
diers and horses streamed with perspiration. 
Francis Joseph, affected that day by a persistent 
attack of ill-humour, bustled about from one to 
another, more tiresome than a gadfly. 

There was to be a cavalry attack led by General 
Baron Strachwitz over a terraced hill. Poor gen- 
eral! He had a very tight uniform that strangled 
him by the neck and made his face like a turkey- 
cock. What with the sun and the Emperor's pres- 
ence, he was overwhelmed with heat and confusion. 

The assault was ordered. The Emperor was not 
satisfied. "Halt!" was roared with a menace like 
that of the sky which grew black over the distant 
mountain. The assault was resumed. Worse than 
ever! Then the Emperor could no longer restrain 
himself. He emitted a savage cry, heedless of the 
many generals and attaches who stood round him 
terrified : 



Francis Joseph, Man of the World 223 

"But what sort of ass is commanding this ac- 
cursed attack?" 

Strachwitz had heard the invective. In accord- 
ance with regulations, he put his horse to a gallop 
and rode up to the Emperor with lowered sword. 
OHe was red, almost black in the face, and had great 
difficulty in gasping out the regulation reply: "I, 
your Majesty, Baron Strachwitz, General of 
the . . . regiment of cavalry, etc." 

Then he had a stroke and fell dead. 

Francis Joseph grew pale for a moment and 
showed some slight emotion; he suspended the 
manoeuvres for ten minutes with his watch in his 
hand. Then the attack was resumed. 

You had never been out hunting with him. That 
is a pity. It was interesting, for the sovereign 
was not only a mighty hunter of women. One 
would indeed imagine that he preferred wild game 
judging by the keenness he displayed. His phys- 
ical fitness as he tramped over tiring hills and 
dales, and his keen glance through the densest 
thickets make him appear a sympathetic sportsman. 
But, on closer observation, a certain mechanical way 
of going to business, a barbarous desire to kill for 
the sake of killing, which you read in his eyes, the 



224 Francis Joseph and His Court 

appalling number of poor furred and feathered 
creatures which you saw piled at his feet after a 
few hours' shooting, soon drove all sentiment out of 
your mind. Or at least you say that even animals 
might have been killed with a little more gentle- 
ness. 

Francis Joseph's other passion was the theatre. 
The Burg Theatre and the Opera house were his 
two favourites, and there were sentimental as well 
as artistic reasons. Remember that it was the Burg 
Theatre which gave him Catherine Schratt, the in- 
comparable interpreter of the "Merry Wives of 
Windsor," the ray of sunshine which came into 
Francis Joseph's life after so many tragedies. 
Also the Opera with its exhibition of so many 
agile legs in harmonious rhythm, and the nightly 
consolation of a dancer's easy love after so many 
heavy cares of State. 

The supply of ballet-dancers at the Opera was 
for a long time entrusted to the wise and discreet 
hands of the self-styled Baroness Pasqualati, a 
dear good lady whom I have had the pleasure of 
knowing personally. Latterly the Baroness' hands 
became rather heavy in her choice of the dancers; 
indeed, the corps de ballet must have seemed to the 




Photograph, Paul Thompson. 

Francis Joseph in Tyrolean Costume 



Francis Joseph, Man of the World 225 

Emperor to lack freshness, for one evening when 
it came in at the beginning of the second Act at a 
performance of Aida, he said contemptuously, 
"This might really be the Museum of Bulak!" 

In that museum, you may not know, the only 
exhibits are mummies. So the Baroness lost her 
job. 

Apart from the ballet, however, Francis Joseph 
did not seem to care very much for the Imperial 
Opera. A magnificent and luxurious building, but 
too heavy and not imposing in front: so much so 
that one of the architects, seeing his artistic crea- 
tion almost buried by the buildings of the Ring- 
strasse — ^much as the Roman law-courts seem to 
seek the bottom of the Tiber — committed suicide 
out of grief. I forget if the unfortunate architect 
was Van der Niill or his colleague Schartsbrunn. 

Francis Joseph certainly preferred the Burg 
Theatre to the Opera, prose to music, the peaceful 
love of Schratt to the devilry of the dancers. 
Those are the tastes of old age. 

Mrs. Schratt must be respected. 

First of all because, they say, the Emperor mar- 
ried her morganatically. Secondly because it is 
through her that the Imperial theatres of Vienna 



226 Francis Joseph and His Court 

are the best in the world. By her thoughtful ad- 
vice the Emperor's purse endowed the Opera and 
the dramatic art with fantastic sums. All that art, 
money, care and labour can give is to be found in 
the chief theatres of Vienna. The artists are as- 
sured spacious lives and fine old-age pensions. 
And the good fairy who created or at least fa- 
voured this state of things was undoubtedly Mrs. 
Schratt. 

You can see her depicted by the expert hand of 
the painter Kantsky on the handsome drop-scene 
of the Burg Theatre, a lovely blonde leaning on a 
lion, while on the other side, armed with a dagger 
and a poisoned cup, is the great tragedy-queen, 
Charlotte Wolter. They afford a happy contrast: 
calm and tempest, radiant day and gloomy night. 

Then in the room adjoining the Emperor's box 
at the Burg, there is an admirable bronze statue 
hiding itself in a bower of electric lights. Some 
say that this statue is a portrait of Catherine and 
that is not unlikely. In any case, one thing is cer- 
tain, that every time the Emperor passed the 
statue, he paused to gaze at it tenderly. He seemed 
even to forget his old dislike of the electric light. 

Francis Joseph was very severe in questions of 



Francis Joseph, Man of the World 227 

morals . . . other people's morals, naturally. 
There must be no transgression. However much 
you racked your brains, you could never really ap- 
preciate what trouble he took to try to regulate the 
conduct of his mad nephews, the Archdukes. 

Less trouble, however, in the case of his son, 
which is odd ; but ever so much in the case of Arch- 
duke Otho. It is said at Vienna that the Emperor 
spent fortunes to relieve the Austrian Don Juan 
from his official mistress. Miss Schleinzer, a dancer 
at the Opera and joint mistress of the Prince of 
Braganza, perhaps too of other foreign princes at 
Vienna. To the "they says" I can add "I know," 
for I have the proofs in my hands — that is to say 
the letters in which, when I was a youth of few 
scruples and the possessor of a noble name, the 
Court offered me a hundred-and-fifty thousand 
crowns if I consented to marry Miss Schleinzer, 
and another one hundred-and-fifty thousand 
crowns if I was prepared to legitimatise the two 
sons which she presented to Archduke Otho. The 
intermediary in this affair, the kind soul who paid 
me the compliment of thinking of my very humble 
person, was dear Baroness Pasqualati, about whom 



228 Francis Joseph and His Court 

I have already spoken, the provider of well turned 
legs for the Imperial ballet. 

When Archdukes refused to give way, they were 
visited with the Imperial wrath and all its terrible 
consequences. You know of the struggle with 
Johann Orth. But there was another case that 
escaped my notice. I heard about it only a little 
while ago from Baron Joseph Ceski, nephew of 
the Grand Baillie of the Sovereign Order of Malta. 
Francis Ferdinand and Otho had another brother 
who followed the family traditions and resolved to 
marry an actress or some one similar. There was 
the usual Imperial displeasure. The Archduke was 
compelled to give up his name and title, though he 
gave up only half his name, dropping the "Haps" 
and calling himself merely "Burg." That was 
little, but he had his worthy actress to wife in com- 
pensation. As he was a good fellow, he wanted 
to attend the funeral of his brother Francis Ferdi- 
nand, who was killed at Serajevo in 1914. It was 
impossible to prevent him, but no one shook hands 
with him, no lips uttered a word of welcome, no 
one showed the least sign of recognising him. 
There was an Imperial taboo. Baron Ceski, who 
was present, told me it was a shameful business. 



Francis Joseph, Man of the World 229 

All this did not prevent the Emperor from mak- 
ing use in conversation of expressions that were 
not exactly immoral, mind you, but that would 
certainly not be permitted by his severe confessor. 

Once upon a time, for instance, when he was at 
Innsbruck, the capital of Tyrol, he was informed 
that the Municipal Council was in great difficulties 
about the choice of a temple for the priestesses of 
terrestrial love, whereupon he remarked to his 
courtiers and the local dignitaries, "You don't need 
a house. Put a roof over the whole town and the 
problem is solved." 

Another time, at a Ball bei Hof, or private dance 
at Court, there was a good deal of talk about the 
German fleet, whose increase the Emperor viewed 
with ill-concealed dislike. Die deutsche Flotie! 
'Note that in German the noun Flotte means fleet, 
whereas the adjective flotte may also mean merry. 

Now at that moment my mother approached to 
present, at the Emperor's request, one of our Ger- 
man cousins from Prussian Silesia, an extraordi- 
narily graceful girl, a Countess of Hoverden. The 
sovereign looked at the child with a great deal of 
interest, and my mother, who was often too ready 
to forget the laws of etiquette, ventured to ask. 



230 Francis Joseph and His Court 

"Which does your Majesty like best: die deutsche 
Flotte or die flotte Deutsche?^' That is to say, the 
German fleet or the merry German. "Naturally, 
Countess Erminia, this merry German," the Em- 
peror replied with a laugh. 

You would scarcely have imagined that this 
tragic personage could enjoy a joke. But you will 
have noticed that he had always been quite differ- 
ent in his private and in his official life. Severe 
with the Archdukes, certainly; but as for himself, 
why that was quite another matter. Quod licet 
Jovi non licet bovi — ^what is sauce for the goose is 
not necessarily sauce for the gander. Just as he 
was the only man in the whole of Austria who 
could wear the war-medal on his breast with the 
inscription outwards and the head concealed. But 
that is perhaps because the head was his own. 

So he too had his loves. But now they are things 
of the past. They were already in the category of 
membries at the time of the Francis Joseph I have 
been describing; they were memories at least ten 
years ago. He was then already confining him- 
self to one quiet, homely, refreshing affection, that 
of his Catherine. 

When I saw him last, the Emperor still held 




Photograph, Paul Thompson. 

Three Generations of Hapsbtjrgs 



Francis Joseph, Man of the World 231 

himself upright in spite of his years. His head 
was slightly bowed, now a little on one side, 
now on the other, as though he wanted to drive 
away something that tickled him inside his col- 
lar. He was on his way back from Imperial 
manoeuvres, where he had been on horseback for 
several hours under a pitiless downpour of rain. 
The result was a troublesome attack of bronchitis, 
which his faithful doctor Kerzl had a great deal of 
trouble to drive out of his emaciated body. Then 
there was still Mrs. Schratt to nurse him, as well 
as his daughter Gisella and Maria Valerie and a 
noisy crowd of merry nephews and nieces. His life 
had to be ordered on the most prudent lines. All 
those devoted nurses had to watch most carefully 
lest the least little speck of dust should get in and 
spoil the old time-piece under its bright glass bell. 
The pendulum swung between the Hofburg and 
the Castle of Schonbrunn. 

But many things were changed. Toward the 
last he had for nurses, surly generals, there was no 
more sunshine in the halls of the Hofburg; the 
gardens of Schonbrunn seemed to exclude the 
springtime. The head was more bent and the eyes 
had a far away look, but not, I think, a look of 



232 Francis Joseph and His Court 

madness. There were voices, voices, voices; a sol- 
dier in his death-struggles amid the fire and snow 
and a mother in her sad cottage, thousands of miles 
away, who felt that her boy's last hour had come. 
The head bent lower and lower still until on No- 
vember 21, 1916, the last spark of life departed 
from the body of Francis Joseph. . . . 



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